Court Opinion

ID: 9847360
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:58:22.577424+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:17:08.066169
License: Public Domain

ROVIRA, Justice,
specially concurring:
I concur in the opinion of the court. I write separately only to emphasize my understanding that nothing in the court’s opinion suggests there is a constitutional requirement that a habitual criminal proceeding be tried before a jury. I believe that the right to a jury trial in such a proceeding is statutorily based.
The legislature has recognized that habitual criminal status warrants strict statutory procedures for its determination. In People v. Quintana, 634 P.2d 413, 419 (Colo.1981), we recognized that if constitutional type procedural safeguards attach to the statutory right to a jury trial in habitual criminal proceedings it is only because it was the “legislative intent to require that an adjudication of habitual criminality be made only in accordance with the same procedural and constitutional safeguards traditionally associated with a trial on guilt or innocence.”
Determining whether a person is a habitual criminal is a sentencing proceeding. The constitutional right to a jury trial applies to trials on the issue of guilt or innocence. It does not apply to sentencing proceedings. E.g., Spaziano v. Florida, — U.S. -, 104 S.Ct. 3154, 82 L.Ed.2d 340 (1984) (neither sixth nor eighth, nor fourteenth amendments require jury sentencing in death penalty cases). Certainly, if there is no right to a jury in a capital sentencing ease, there is no such right in a habitual criminal sentencing proceeding.