The Colorado Supreme Court ruled last week a law that allowed for some juveniles who’d been sentenced to life without parole to be resentenced to lesser, determinate prison terms is in fact constitutional.
State lawmakers passed the 2016 legislation in response to a trilogy of rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court that made it unconstitutional to sentence a juvenile to life without parole. Between 1990 and 2006, juveniles convicted of first-degree murder in Colorado received a mandatory life sentence; after 2006, the sentence was changed to life with parole eligibility at 40 years. However, about 50 individuals remained serving that now-unconstitutional sentence — and the 2016 law provided guidance on how the courts should handle those cases.
For the majority of the individuals, the law offered the current sentence on the books (as well as a chance for earned time to reduce the sentence). But for about 16 who’d been convicted of felony murder — a provision in the statute that allows for a first-degree murder conviction even for so-called accomplices — the law provided a second option: If during a resentencing hearing, a district court judge found “extraordinary mitigating circumstances,” the judge could decide to issue the individual a determinate sentence between 30 and 50 years.
Several cases began to make their way through the system, and some, including that of Curtis Brooks, were scheduled for resentencing hearings. Prior to Brooks’ hearing, however, 18th Judicial District Attorney George Brauchler challenged the constitutionality of the law, saying it violated part of the state constitution that prohibits special legislation. Brauchler’s office argued the new law gave special treatment to the 16 individuals eligible for a new determinate sentence.
In its unanimous ruling issued Sept. 17, the state Supreme Court disagreed, finding the new law did not violate the constitution’s special legislation clause. The majority opinion written by Justice Gabriel stated, “that the revised sentencing scheme does not run afoul of the Colorado Constitution’s prohibition of special legislation because the statute creates a genuine class and its legislative classifications are reasonable.”
“I think it was a pretty decisive rejection,” said Sean Connelly, an appellate lawyer and former Colorado Court of Appeals judge, who argued the case on behalf of Curtis Brooks. “It’s a nice vindication for the position of Curtis and others like him.”
Following the decision, Brauchler, who is running for state attorney general, released a statement, which read, in part: “We raised this issue because we had doubts about the validity of this law. The Supreme Court has now spoken, we know what the law is, and we accept that the ruling is now the law of our state. It is important that we now see that Mr. Brooks is back court as soon as possible for re-sentencing under the 2016 legislation.”
Brooks, who was 15 when he got in trouble with the law, also has a clemency petition pending with Gov. John Hickenlooper. His case dates back to 1995. At the time, Brooks had only lived in Denver for about a year. He was homeless. That spring, he met three other teens who enlisted Brooks in a carjacking plot that went fatally wrong. As part of the scheme, one of the three kids gave Brooks a gun and instructed him to fire a few warning shots in the air to distract the driver of the car they intended to steal. Unexpectedly, though, one of the other kids shot and killed the car’s owner. A jury convicted Brooks, and, in accordance with the statute at the time, a judge sentenced him to life without parole.
The court’s ruling on the Special Legislation Clause came down to a handful of factors, including the size of the group the law impacted. First, though, Gabriel noted in the court’s analysis that the Clause was “‘intended to cur favoritism on the part of the General Assembly, prevent the state government from interfering with local affairs, and preclude the legislature from passing unnecessary laws to fit limited circumstances.’ Since the adoption of our state constitution, we have only rarely concluded that a statute violated the Special Legislation Clause.”
One of those times involved a case from the 1960s in which Denver tried to pass a law that would have allowed the city to annex Glendale; the courts struck the law down, finding that it was targeted specifically at Glendale and thus constituted special legislation. In this case, the court found that not only did special legislation apply to a group of more than one — about 16 defendants are eligible for this type of resentencing hearing — but that the possibility existed for more people to fall into the category of this group in the future. “Here, although the People contend that the class of sixteen can never include any other members, we disagree. As Brooks contends, the 2016 sentencing legislation … could conceivably apply to a ‘cold case,’ that is, a case in which a now-unknown person is convicted and sentenced in the future for a felony murder committed on or after July 1, 1990 and before July 1, 2006 when that person was a juvenile.”
“In addition to the possibility of a cold case defendant,” Gabriel wrote, “as amicus curiae the Denver District Attorney posits, the class of sixteen could also potentially expand by way of a post-conviction challenge. For example, a juvenile might have been charged as an adult and convicted of bother murder after deliberation and felony murder for acts committed on or after July 1, 1990 and before July 1, 2006. … The juvenile could then, however, initiate and prevail in a post-conviction proceeding seeking to invalidate his or her prior conviction, and a post-conviction order in favor of the juvenile might result in an amended judgment reflecting a conviction for felony murder.”
In a concurrence written by Chief Justice Nathan Coats, and joined by Justice Monica Marquez, Coats arrived at the same conclusion as the majority, but via a different route. “In my view, we have come to use concepts like “closed” or “illusory” in ways that no longer serve the purpose for which they were developed, and our constitutional prohibition against special laws has come to be largely superseded by the subsequent development of modern equal protection law.”
But regardless of how the court found its way to the concussion, the 2016 law now stands and those who are eligible to be resentenced under the statute can now proceed in pursuing that remedy.
— Chris Outcalt