Court Opinion

ID: 9785942
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 22:49:23.400804+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:21.441646
License: Public Domain

Justice COATS,
concurring in the judgment only.
I concur in the majority’s judgment affirming the court of appeals and upholding the defendant’s sentence, but I do so largely for the reasons articulated in my separate opinion in Lopez v. People, 113 P.3d 713 (Colo.2005). Were I to conclude that the defendant’s sentence was not statutorily authorized by the jury’s verdict alone (as does the majority), and that the sentencing court acquired authority to sentence beyond the presumptive range only as the result of additional factfinding, I would feel compelled to remand for resentencing. While I have previously criticized this court’s understanding of the term “statutory maximum,” I think the majority’s application of that concept in this case brings into even sharper focus its incompatibility with the recent sentencing jurisprudence of the United States Supreme *995Court, as well as its truly anomalous policy implications.
The United States Supreme Court has made clear that a defendant is entitled to have any fact that increases his penalty beyond the prescribed statutory maximum, with the possible exception of the fact of a prior conviction, submitted to a jury and proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296, 124 S.Ct. 2531, 2536, 159 L.Ed.2d 403 (2004). Apparently, admissions by the defendant, as well as his accession to judicial factfinding, amount to a waiver or forfeiture of that entitlement. Further, the Supreme Court has explained that by “statutory maximum” it refers to the maximum sentence that a judge may impose solely on the basis of the facts reflected in the jury verdict or admitted by the defendant. United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220, -, 125 S.Ct. 738, 749, 160 L.Ed.2d 621 (2005). Rather than understanding the “statutory maximum,” however, as the longest sentence legislatively permitted for conviction of a particular crime alone (in contradistinction to a sentence permitted by the general assembly only upon the finding of additional aggravating facts), the majority conceives of the statutory maximum as the longest sentence authorized by a combination of the applicable statute “and the particular facts validly before the judge in the case.” Lopez, 113 P.3d at 722.
If the court’s intent had not already been made clear, the majority in this case unequivocally intends the statutory maximum, upon conviction alone, to be the highest number of years specified in the presumptive range. Although the court in Lopez accepted the well-settled propositions that the characterization of aggravating circumstances as extraordinarily aggravating is a legal determination and that facts tending to establish the elements of an offense themselves can be considered aggravation or extraordinary aggravation, it concluded that a finding of extraordinary aggravation, triggering a sentence beyond the presumptive range, necessarily requires a finding of facts not reflected in the jury’s verdict.1 See id. at 725-26 (construing and applying People v. Leske, 957 P.2d 1030 (Colo.1998), People v. Walker, 724 P.2d 666 (Colo.1986), and People v. Phillips, 652 P.2d 575 (Colo.1982)).
The real significance of the majority’s “statutory maximum,” however, is not its initial location at the top of the presumptive range, but its ability to “morph” with additional factfinding. Rather than representing a legislatively established point beyond which any greater sentence for a particular crime can be based only upon facts admitted by the defendant or further established by a jury, the majority’s “statutory maximum” changes or shifts upward upon the finding of any so-called Blakely-compliant or -exempt fact, widening the sentencing range within which traditional sentencing discretion may be exercised and additional facts, whether Blakely-compliant or not, may be considered. See Lopez, 113 P.3d at 720, 731.
Even if the “statutory maximum” for a particular crime, a concept integral to the United States Supreme Court’s holding in Blakely, could reasonably be understood to float with jury findings and admissions of the defendant not already reflected in the verdict, but see Lopez, 113 P.3d 713, 731-35 (Coats, J., concurring in the judgment only), it is difficult to imagine how this could also occur with prior convictions. At best, a prior conviction is distinguishable from the kind of facts that a defendant is entitled to have established by a jury before contributing to an increased penalty. While a judicially-determined prior conviction may therefore be a fact capable of supporting a penalty beyond the “statutory maximum,” in no sense is it a fact “reflected in the jury verdict or admitted by the defendant.” See Booker, 125 S.Ct. at 749. It is therefore difficult to see how it could, even according to the rationale of Lo*996pez, raise the “statutory maximum” and simultaneously widen the range subject to traditional sentencing considerations.
Nevertheless, the majority holds that a prior conviction is not only capable of supporting an increased penalty but actually “opens the aggravated sentencing range,” maj. op. at 993, such that a sentence within this widened range “ ‘is both constitutionally and statutorily sound even if the sentencing judge also considered factors that were not Blakely-complaint or Blakely-exempt,’ ” id. (quoting Lopez, 113 P.3d at 731). Like the court in Lopez, the majority finds it unnecessary to address the non-Blakely-compliant or -exempt facts also relied on by the sentencing court. Maj. op. at 994. Unlike Lopez, however, it fails to find that the sentencing court relied upon any Blakely-compliant fact, which raised the “statutory maximum.”
The sentencing court in this case clearly based its extraordinarily aggravated sentence, in part, on facts that were neither Blakely-compliant nor Blakely-exempt, without also relying on any Blakely-compliant fact. I would therefore remand for resen-tencing if I believed, like the majority, that extraordinarily aggravated sentencing necessitates additional factfinding. If some of the facts upon which the sentencing court relied were not permissible, it is difficult to know whether that court would have imposed the same sentence based solely upon permissible considerations. I believe that this result would be required even if the defendant’s prior convictions were adequately established, but for aught appearing in the majority’s opinion, it also remains unclear to me precisely what procedure or proof is required in this jurisdiction to establish and rely upon a defendant’s prior record as an extraordinarily aggravating fact.
The general assembly expressly accounts for a defendant’s prior felony record in its sentencing provisions for habitual criminals. Under those provisions, a defendant may be sentenced to various multiples of the maximum sentence in the presumptive range for the felony of which he stands currently convicted, but only upon separate charges, a separate hearing, and proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant has been previously convicted as alleged. See §§ 18-1.3-801 -804, C.R.S. (2005). Although sentences in the extraordinarily aggravated range under the general felony sentencing scheme similarly may extend to twice the maximum in the presumptive range, see § 18-1.3-401(6), C.R.S. (2005), and although sentencing in this range is held by the majority to be permissible only upon additional factfinding, the majority would apparently permit it solely by taking judicial notice of prior convictions, without requiring separate pleading or proof whatsoever.
Under the constitutional and statutory construction of the majority, a defendant with an alleged prior conviction (apparently for anything) is subject to double the sentence permitted by his current conviction alone, unless (presumably) he successfully rebuts that allegation. Ironically, under this regime, a defendant charged with a more serious offense may be subject to a far greater increase in penalty, based on far less process, than a habitual criminal charged with a less serious offense. Perhaps even more ironically, the majority’s construction of our statutory scheme as authorizing sentencing beyond the presumptive range only upon additional facts, while simultaneously permitting the sentence to double for any prior conviction or Blakely-compliant fact, converts a sentencing scheme of broad judicial discretion, guided by legislative presumptions, into one of vastly disparate sentencing ranges, determined by minor differences in criminal history and additional jury findings or admissions, however innocuous.
Because I do not consider this restructuring of our sentencing scheme to be required by, or even consistent with, recent Supreme Court sentencing jurisprudence, and because I believe it will lead to irrational, and fortuitous, differences in sentencing, I concur only in the judgment of the court to affirm.
I am authorized to state that Justice KOURLIS joins in this concurrence.

. I find it curious that the Lopez majority did not choose the mid-point of the presumptive range as its initial statutory maximum, since there is no qualitative distinction between aggravation and extraordinary aggravation, and the sentencing court’s balance of aggravation and mitigation determines how great a sentence within the presumptive range is to be imposed. By the majority's reasoning, a finding of aggravation sufficient to justify a large presumptive range sentence would seem to require a finding of facts not already reflected in the verdict every bit as much as does a finding of extraordinary aggravation.