THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF COLORADO v. MARTIN CASTRUITA ESPINOZA
No. 17SC830
Supreme Court of the State of Colorado
May 26, 2020
2020 CO 43
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ADVANCE SHEET HEADNOTE
May 26, 2020
2020 CO 43
No. 17SC830, People v. Espinoza - Sentencing and Punishment - Concurrent and Consecutive Sentencing - Crimes of Violence.
The People petitioned for review of the court of appeals’ judgment reversing the trial court‘s imposition of consecutive sentences for Espinoza‘s ten convictions for the attempted first degree murder of ten different people. Reasoning that Espinoza‘s ten attempted murder convictions were separate crimes of violence, the trial court considered itself bound by statute to impose consecutive sentences. The intermediate appellate court, however, found that because the ten convictions were premised on a “single act of fire-setting,”
The supreme court reversed, holding that even according to the intermediate appellate court‘s understanding of the term “separate crimes of violence,” Espinoza‘s convictions required consecutive sentences pursuant to
The Supreme Court of the State of Colorado
2 East 14th Avenue • Denver, Colorado 80203
2020 CO 43
Supreme Court Case No. 17SC830
Certiorari to the Colorado Court of Appeals
Court of Appeals Case No. 15CA1920
Petitioner:
The People of the State of Colorado,
v.
Respondent:
Martin Castruita Espinoza.
Judgment Reversed
en banc
May 26, 2020
Attorneys for Petitioner:
Philip J. Weiser, Attorney General
Megan C. Rasband, Assistant Attorney General
Denver, Colorado
Attorney for Respondent:
Lauretta A. Martin Neff
Grand Junction, Colorado
CHIEF JUSTICE COATS delivered the Opinion of the Court.
¶1 The People petitioned for review of the court of appeals’ judgment reversing the trial court‘s imposition of consecutive sentences for Espinoza‘s ten convictions for the attempted first degree murder of ten different people. Reasoning that Espinoza‘s ten attempted murder convictions were separate crimes of violence, the trial court considered itself bound by statute to impose consecutive sentences. The intermediate appellate court, however, found that because the ten convictions were premised on a “single act of fire-setting,” they were supported by identical evidence, notwithstanding the fact that each conviction required proof that the defendant attempted to kill a different person. Further concluding that convictions for multiple crimes of violence that are supported by identical evidence do not fall within the statutory mandate to sentence consecutively, the intermediate appellate court reversed and remanded for resentencing.
¶2 Because offenses defined in terms of their victimization of another and committed against different victims are not capable of being proved by identical evidence within the contemplation of
I.
¶3 Martin Castruita Espinoza was charged with first degree arson, third degree assault, and attempted first degree murder (extreme indifference), with corresponding crime-of-violence counts, arising out of an incident in which a fire raged through his mother‘s apartment. As pertinent to the question presented on certiorari, he was convicted of 10 counts of attempted extreme indifference murder, for which he was sentenced consecutively to a total term of 160 years in the custody of the Department of Corrections.
¶4 Evidence was presented at trial from which the trier of fact could find that on March 4, 2014, the defendant started a fire on the balcony of his mother‘s apartment, which spread throughout the apartment building and to a neighboring building. The ten people who were named victims of the attempted murder counts were inside the defendant‘s mother‘s apartment building during the fire but were able to escape and survive.
¶5 In imposing sentences for the attempted murder convictions, the sentencing court considered itself bound by
¶6 The defendant appealed and, as relevant here, challenged the trial court‘s imposition of consecutive sentences. The intermediate appellate court reversed. In reliance on prior holdings of that court, the division understood the reference in
¶7 We granted the People‘s petition for certiorari review to consider whether the court of appeals erred in finding that the defendant‘s ten attempted murder convictions were supported by identical evidence and for that reason were not separate crimes of violence giving rise to mandatory consecutive sentencing.
II.
¶8 We have long held that in the absence of legislation to the contrary, sentencing courts in this jurisdiction have the inherent power to order sentences for different convictions to be served either consecutively or concurrently. Marquez v. People, 2013 CO 58, ¶¶ 6, 311 P.3d 265, 267 (citing Qureshi v. Dist. Court, 727 P.2d 45, 46-47 (Colo. 1986), and People v. Self, 615 P.2d 693, 695 (Colo. 1980)). Both
¶9 More particularly,
¶10 Relying largely on prior holdings by other divisions of the court of appeals, the division below accepted as established the proposition that crimes of violence are “separate” within the meaning of
¶11 Since adoption of the 1972 Colorado Criminal Code, we have had occasion to comment on the identical evidence requirement of
¶12 In Juhl we held that the defendant‘s separate convictions of first degree assault and vehicular assault for the injuries he caused to the driver of another vehicle, despite not precisely sharing the same elements, were nevertheless supported by identical evidence because both were based on “Juhl‘s act of colliding head-on with Mrs. Bailey‘s truck while he was engaged in a high-speed chase to elude the police.” Id. at 902-03. The court of appeals below apparently understood our holding concerning the scope of the “identical evidence” inquiry in that case to limit the relevant inquiry concerning “identical evidence” to nothing more than proof of the volitional, or voluntary, act required for the commission of any crime; and therefore in answering the question whether the defendant‘s convictions were supported by identical evidence, it considered only whether the defendant‘s volitional “act of fire-setting” was the same “act” upon which all of his attempted murder convictions were premised. As we would later emphasize in Schneider v. People, 2016 CO 70, ¶ 23, 382 P.3d 835, 841, however, in Juhl we made no attempt to further explain precisely what we meant by the defendant‘s “act,” or “conduct,” or further describe the circumstances and consequences necessarily included within the definition or scope of criminally proscribed conduct. Similarly, in Schneider itself we had no need to define these terms comprehensively. See id. at ¶¶ 23-24, 382 P.3d at 841-42 (finding that two convictions for sexual assault were not supported by identical evidence despite being based on a single continuous penetration, where each crime required separate proof of circumstances necessarily attending the defendant‘s voluntary act for it to qualify as sexual assault, in the one case the conduct being criminal only upon proof that the act of penetration was accompanied by sufficient means to overcome the victim‘s will, and in the other, the conduct being criminal only upon proof that the act was inflicted upon a helpless and nonconsenting victim).
¶13 Again, today we need not attempt such a global definition, capable of addressing crimes of every nature. It is enough here that an offense defined in terms of committing an act causing harm to another person can never be supported by proof that the defendant committed an act causing harm to a different person, whether or not the defendant‘s volitional act causing harm was the same; and read in context and as a whole, our rationale in Juhl suggested nothing to the contrary. In Juhl we sought to distinguish crimes differing in their elements from crimes supported by different evidence, holding in that case simply that the defendant‘s convictions of the first degree assault and the vehicular assault of the same victim were supported by identical evidence because although the elements of the two crimes differed and neither crime was fully included within the other, proof of the elements of both offenses in that case was necessarily inferred from the same fund of evidence - evidence of “Juhl‘s act of colliding head-on with Mrs. Bailey‘s truck while he was engaged in a high-speed chase to elude the police.” 172 P.3d at 902-03. Nowhere did we suggest that the two offenses were supported by identical evidence simply because the defendant‘s volitional act of driving, irrespective of attendant circumstances and consequences necessary to infer the elements of each crime of assault, was proven by the same evidence.
¶14 More directly, however, our opinion in Juhl made clear that there was a second victim of the defendant‘s “act of colliding head-on with Mrs. Bailey‘s truck while he was engaged in a high-speed chase to elude the police,” who was killed by this same conduct of the defendant. Id. at 898, 902. As we noted in the opinion, Juhl was therefore also convicted of homicide for killing the driver‘s passenger. Id. at 898. Rather than concluding that sentences for all of the crimes committed by the defendant‘s same act of colliding head-on with Mrs. Bailey‘s truck were required to run concurrently, we concluded that the convictions involving Mrs. Bailey must run concurrently with each other,
¶15 Were it not sufficiently clear from the common understanding of the terms themselves that a crime defined as an act causing the death of one person is not proved by evidence demonstrating that the same act by the defendant also caused the death of another person, some thirty-five years ago the legislature expressly amended its original articulation of the concurrent sentence mandate of
¶16 We find unpersuasive, if not positively casuistic, the assertion that by using the term “except” in
¶17 Because there is no suggestion here of applying this legislative action retroactively, our prior case law distinguishing a legislative intent to clarify from an intent to change an existing statute is in no way at issue. Cf. Union Pac. R.R. v. Martin, 209 P.3d 185, 188-89 (Colo. 2009) (distinguishing legislative clarification from law change in the context of a retroactivity analysis); City of Colorado Springs v. Powell, 156 P.3d 461, 464-65 (Colo. 2007) (same). Whatever may have been the legislature‘s motivation for singling out for specific mention crimes involving multiple victims, its goal in amending the statute was clearly to ensure that punishment for crimes involving multiple victims not be limited to concurrent sentences, even where they have been joined in a single prosecution for having been committed by the same act or series of acts. Nothing in this amendment to
¶18 In Juhl we concluded that both the defendant‘s conviction for committing first degree assault of Mrs. Bailey and his conviction for committing vehicular assault of Mrs. Bailey “were supported by evidence of the collision with Mrs. Bailey‘s truck and the circumstances under which that collision occurred.” 172 P.3d at 903. Although we were there intent on distinguishing convictions based on the same act from convictions based on separate acts, the case before us was limited to a situation involving not only the same act, but also crimes committed under the same circumstances, causing the same injuries, to the same victim. Id. at 899, 902-03.
III.
¶19 Much like the other statutory methods of committing first degree murder, extreme indifference murder is ultimately defined in terms of engaging in conduct that causes the death of another person. Compare
¶20 To the extent the defendant‘s demand for concurrent sentencing in this particular case has even intuitive appeal, that appeal stems from the somewhat counterintuitive way in which attempt liability has been construed in this jurisdiction - not from any legislative mandate of concurrent sentencing for crimes proved by identical evidence. See, e.g., Montoya v. People, 2017 CO 40, ¶ 17, 394 P.3d 676, 683-84. Whether there was sufficient evidence, and whether the jury was properly instructed, to find that the defendant knowingly engaged in conduct strongly corroborative of his purpose to create a grave risk of death to each of the victims are questions not before this court, but consecutive sentences are mandated for proper convictions of the attempted first degree murder of multiple victims.
IV.
¶21 Because offenses defined in terms of their victimization of another and committed against different victims are not capable of being proved by identical evidence within the contemplation of
CHIEF JUSTICE COATS