Original Proceeding Pursuant to C.A.R.21 Arapahoe County
District Court Case No. 95CR675 Honorable Carlos A. Samour,
Jr., Judge.
Attorneys for Plaintiff: George H. Brauchler, District
Attorney, Eighteenth Judicial District Susan J. Trout, Senior
Deputy District Attorney Centennial, Colorado
Attorneys for Defendant: Connelly Law, LLC Sean Connelly
Denver, Colorado
Eytan
Nielsen LLC Dru Nielsen Denver, Colorado
Ratliff Law Firm LLC Ashley Ratliff Denver, Colorado
Attorneys for Amici Curiae Colorado Constitutional, Criminal,
and Juvenile Law Scholars: Christopher N. Lasch Ian Farrell
Denver, Colorado
Attorneys for Amicus Curiae Denver District Attorney: Beth
McCann, Denver District Attorney, Second Judicial District
Robert M. Russel, Senior Chief Deputy District Attorney
Denver, Colorado
Attorneys for Amici Curiae District Attorneys for the First,
Fourth, and Nineteenth Judicial Districts: Peter Weir,
District Attorney, First Judicial District Donna Skinner
Reed, Chief Appellate Deputy District Attorney Golden,
Colorado
Daniel
H. May, District Attorney, Fourth Judicial District Doyle
Baker, Senior Deputy District Attorney Colorado Springs,
Colorado
Michael J. Rourke, District Attorney, Nineteenth Judicial
District Greeley, Colorado
GABRIEL JUSTICE.
¶1
This case presents the question of whether Colorado's
recently enacted sentencing scheme for juvenile offenders who
received unconstitutional mandatory sentences to life in
prison without the possibility of parole ("LWOP")
violates the Special Legislation Clause of the Colorado
Constitution. We conclude that it does not.
¶2
Based on acts that Brooks committed when he was fifteen years
old, prosecutors charged Brooks as an adult with felony
murder and other crimes. After a jury convicted Brooks on
multiple counts, including the felony murder charge, the
trial court imposed a mandatory LWOP sentence in accordance
with Colorado's then-applicable sentencing statutes.
¶3
Over fifteen years later, the United States Supreme Court
decided Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012), and
Montgomery v. Louisiana, 136 S.Ct. 718 (2016),
which, respectively, deemed mandatory LWOP sentences for
those who were under eighteen at the time of their crimes
unconstitutional and concluded that Miller announced
a new substantive constitutional rule that was to be applied
retroactively on state collateral review. In response to
these rulings, the General Assembly amended the pertinent
sentencing statutes to provide for resentencing of people,
like Brooks, who were then serving unconstitutional mandatory
LWOP sentences.
¶4
Under the General Assembly's revised sentencing scheme,
most persons serving unconstitutional sentences for class 1
felonies would be resentenced to a term of life imprisonment
with the possibility of parole after forty years.
See § 18-1.3-401(4)(c)(I), C.R.S. (2018). A
juvenile who had received a mandatory LWOP sentence after
conviction for felony murder, however, could request a
resentencing hearing before the district court. If, based on
the evidence presented at this hearing, the district court
found extraordinary mitigating circumstances, then the court
could resentence the defendant to a determinate sentence of
thirty to fifty years in prison. See §
18-1.3-401(4)(c)(I)(A).
¶5
In accordance with these procedures, Brooks petitioned the
district court to resentence him to a determinate term of
thirty years in prison, over twenty of which he had already
served, with ten years of mandatory parole. The People
opposed this motion, arguing that the General Assembly's
revisions to the sentencing scheme violated the Colorado
Constitution's Special Legislation Clause by granting to
the small group of people serving unconstitutional sentences
for felony murder special privileges (namely, the
resentencing hearing and the potential for a thirty- to
fifty-year determinate sentence) that were unavailable to the
larger class of people serving unconstitutional sentences.
¶6
The district court ultimately concluded that the People had
not carried their burden of demonstrating that the revised
sentencing scheme violated the Special Legislation Clause.
The People then petitioned this court for a rule to show
cause why the district court's order should not be
vacated, and we granted that petition.
¶7
We now discharge the rule. Assuming without deciding that the
revised sentencing scheme is subject to the Special
Legislation Clause and implicates one of the provisions
enumerated therein, we conclude that the sentencing scheme
does not run afoul of the constitution's prohibition of
special legislation because the statute creates a genuine
class and its legislative classifications are reasonable. In
so concluding, we reject the People's contentions that
the class must be deemed illusory because it is
"closed" and that the class is, in fact, closed to
future members.
¶8
Accordingly, we agree with the district court's
conclusion that the Special Legislation Clause does not
invalidate the revised sentencing legislation, although our
reasoning differs from that court's analysis in several
respects. We therefore discharge the rule to show cause.
I.
Facts and Procedural History
¶9
In 1997, a jury convicted Brooks for, among other things, a
felony murder committed in 1995 when he was fifteen years
old. Brooks had been tried as an adult, and pursuant to the
sentencing laws in effect at the time, the court sentenced
him to a mandatory LWOP term. Brooks began serving this
sentence in 1997, and he remains in prison today.
¶10
In 2012, the United States Supreme Court decided
Miller, 567 U.S. at 465, in which it held that
"mandatory life without parole for those under the age
of 18 at the time of their crimes violates the Eighth
Amendment's prohibition on 'cruel and unusual
punishments.'" Montgomery, 136 S.Ct. at
732, decided four years later, clarified that Miller
had announced a substantive rule that should be applied
retroactively in cases on collateral review.
¶11 Taken together, these two cases effectively
invalidated the sentence that Brooks had received, along with
the sentences of approximately fifty other persons in
Colorado who had been convicted of class 1 felonies committed
on or after July 1, 1990 and before July 1, 2006 when they
were juveniles. Colorado statutory law, however, did not
provide any alternative constitutional sentences for these
offenders.
¶12
The gap that Miller and Montgomery left in
Colorado's sentencing scheme thus cried out for a
legislative solution. See People v. Tate, 2015 CO
42, ¶ 47, 352 P.3d 959, 969-70 (attempting, in the
absence of an applicable constitutional sentence adopted by
the legislature, to deduce the sentence that the legislature
would have adopted had it anticipated the ruling in
Miller). In 2016, the General Assembly responded and
amended Colorado's sentencing scheme to provide for the
resentencing of those persons whose sentences had been
rendered unconstitutional by Miller and
Montgomery. The revised legislation (the "2016
sentencing legislation") provides, in pertinent part:
(c)(I) . . . [A]s to a person who is convicted as an adult of
a class 1 felony following a direct filing of an information
or indictment in the district court pursuant to section
19-2-517, C.R.S., or transfer of proceedings to the district
court pursuant to section 19-2-518, C.R.S., or pursuant to
either of these sections as they existed prior to their
repeal and reenactment, with amendments, by House Bill
96-1005, which felony was committed on or after July 1, 1990,
and before July 1, 2006, and who received a sentence to life
imprisonment without the possibility of parole:
(A) If the felony for which the person was convicted is
murder in the first degree, as described in section
18-3-102(1)(b) [i.e., felony murder], then the district
court, after holding a hearing, may sentence the person to a
determinate sentence within the range of thirty to fifty
years in prison, less any earned time granted pursuant to
section 17-22.5-405, C.R.S., if, after considering the
factors described in subparagraph (II) of this paragraph (c),
the district court finds extraordinary mitigating
circumstances. Alternatively, the court may sentence the
person to a term of life imprisonment with the possibility of
parole after serving forty years, less any earned time
granted pursuant to section 17-22.5-405, C.R.S.
(B) If the felony for which the person was convicted is not
murder in the first degree, as described in section
18-3-102(1)(b) [i.e., if it is a form of first degree murder
other than felony murder], then the district court shall
sentence the person to a term of life imprisonment with the
possibility of parole after serving ...