Candelaria v. People

• Decision Date: 18 December 2006
• Docket Number: No. 04SC657.,04SC657.
• Citation: 148 P.3d 178
• Parties: Juan CANDELARIA, Petitioner/Cross-Respondent v. The PEOPLE of the State of Colorado, Respondent/Cross-Petitioner.
• Court: Colorado Supreme Court

148 P.3d 178

Juan CANDELARIA, Petitioner/Cross-Respondent v. The PEOPLE of the State of Colorado, Respondent/Cross-Petitioner.

No. 04SC657.

Supreme Court of Colorado, En Banc.

December 18, 2006.

Douglas K. Wilson, Colorado State Public Defender, Jason C. Middleton, Deputy Public Defender, Denver, Colorado, Attorneys for Petitioner/Cross-Respondent.

John W. Suthers, Attorney General, John J. Fuerst III, Assistant Attorney General, Denver, Colorado, Attorneys for Respondent/Cross-Petitioner.

Justice COATS delivered the Opinion of the Court.

Both the People and the defendant petitioned for review of the court of appeals' judgment in People v. Candelaria, 107 P.3d 1080 (Colo.App.2004). Among other crimes, the defendant was found guilty of first degree murder, conspiracy to commit first degree murder, and attempt to commit first degree murder, on theories of both extreme indifference and deliberation. Although the court of appeals held the elements of extreme indifference murder and murder after deliberation to be logically inconsistent, it found that retrial was not required, instead vacating the judgments of conviction for conspiring to commit, attempting to commit, and committing extreme indifference murder.

Because the jury's findings of extreme indifference murder and murder after deliberation were not inconsistent, the judgment of the court of appeals is reversed in part. Because, however, the mittimus does not accurately reflect the jury's verdicts and the effect of its finding that the defendant violated more than one subsection of the first degree murder statute, the case is remanded to the court of appeals with orders to direct the correction of the mittimus.

I.

The defendant, Juan Candelaria, was charged with first degree murder and a host of lesser offenses arising from a May 1997, gang-related shooting in Colorado Springs. Evidence at trial was sufficient to permit the jury to find that on the night in question the defendant drove a car with several armed individuals in search of P.M., to retaliate for a shooting incident involving P.M. earlier that evening; and when they eventually encountered four individuals in P.M.'s car, they fired as many as twenty-four rounds at it, killing G.R., a teenage passenger.

As pertinent to the issues before this court, the prosecution charged the defendant, in separate counts, with both the extreme indifference murder and the deliberate murder of G.R. It also charged the defendant, in a single count, with conspiracy to murder P.M., referencing in that count both the deliberation and extreme indifference subsections of the first degree murder statute. Similarly, it charged him with attempt to murder P.M., in a single count, again referencing both subsections of the murder statute.¹

On a single verdict form, the jury found the defendant guilty of the first degree murder of G.R., and in response to the included interrogatories, indicated that it did so by finding that he committed murder in the first degree after deliberation, as well as by extreme indifference. On another verdict form, the jury found the defendant guilty of conspiring to commit the first degree murder of P.M., and similarly indicated in the included interrogatories that it found him guilty with regard to both definitions of first degree murder. Finally, in a third verdict form, it found the defendant guilty of the attempted first degree murder of P.M., also according to both definitions of first degree murder.

On the mittimus, the district court indicated that the defendant had been found guilty of both murder after deliberation and extreme indifference murder, but it entered a sentence only for murder after deliberation. Because the defendant was charged with conspiracy to murder P.M. in only one count (count 4), the district court entered only one conviction and 48-year sentence for conspiracy, but on the mittimus it described that conviction as conspiracy to commit first degree extreme indifference murder. Similarly, with regard to attempt (count 8), it entered only one conviction and a 48-year sentence for the defendant's attempt to murder P.M., but it described that conviction as attempt to commit first degree extreme indifference murder.

The court of appeals agreed with the defendant that the statutory elements of deliberate murder and extreme indifference murder made them logically inconsistent; however, it held that any prejudice to the defendant would be eliminated by simply vacating his convictions for extreme indifference murder, as well as conspiracy and attempt to commit extreme indifference murder. The appellate court therefore ordered vacated the judgment of conviction for the extreme indifference murder of G.R., as well as the defendant's convictions and sentences for conspiring and attempting to commit the first degree extreme indifference murder of P.M.

Both parties petitioned for a writ of certiorari. This court agreed to consider the questions whether verdicts based on deliberate murder and extreme indifference murder of the same person are indeed inconsistent and, if so, whether it was error not to remand for a new trial.

II.

Nearly a quarter century ago, this court held that the Colorado Criminal Code defines a single offense of first degree murder, which can be committed in four different ways, as distinguished from defining four different offenses of first degree murder. People v. Lowe, 660 P.2d 1261, 1269-71 (Colo.1983). We therefore found that the legislature intended to permit the same defendant to suffer only one conviction of murder for the killing of any single victim. Id. at 1270-71. We also considered it important, however, that the prosecution be permitted to charge multiple theories of first degree murder in separate counts, and that the jury's findings with regard to each count be preserved by special interrogatory. Id. at 1271. To that end, we prescribed a verdict form offering the jury an opportunity to find the defendant not guilty or guilty of first degree murder, and in the latter case, requiring the jury to indicate by special interrogatory the separate statutory subsections it found the defendant to have violated. Id. at 1271 n. 14.

Although these four subsections have been amended at various times, and two additional subsections have been added, the basic structure of the first degree murder statute — a single section of the criminal code with multiple subsections — has not changed. See § 18-3-102, C.R.S. (2006). Subsection (1)(d) of the statute continues to proscribe what has come to be referred to as "extreme indifference" murder, which has a rich history of evolution in statutory and case law, both before and since adoption of the current criminal code. See, e.g., People v. Jones, 193 Colo. 250, 565 P.2d 1333 (1977); People ex rel. Russel v. Dist. Court, 185 Colo. 78, 521 P.2d 1254 (1974); Longinotti v. People, 46 Colo. 173, 102 P. 165 (1909).

Particularly, after the extreme indifference murder statute had been construed to prohibit more than simply conduct that endangers many people, see Jones, 193 Colo. at 254, 565 P.2d at 1336, and after both it and second degree murder had been amended to require only a general criminal intent, we found extreme indifference murder indistinguishable from second degree murder. People v. Marcy, 628 P.2d 69, 78 (Colo.1981). Under a due process doctrine unique to the state constitution, see People v. Estrada, 198 Colo. 188, 191, 601 P.2d 619, 621 (1979), we therefore found it unconstitutional for the legislature to punish extreme indifference murder more severely than second degree murder. See Marcy, 628 P.2d at 78; see also People v. Curtis, 627 P.2d 734, 736 (Colo. 1981); People v. Gurule, 628 P.2d 99, 102 (Colo.1981); People v. Lee, 630 P.2d 583, 587-88 (Colo.1981).

The Colorado General Assembly immediately responded by amending section 18-3-102(1)(d). See ch. 212, sec. 4, § 18-3-102(1)(d), 1981 Colo. Sess. Laws 972, 973. As amended, subsection (1)(d) specifies that a person commits first degree murder if: "under circumstances evidencing an attitude of universal malice manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life generally, he knowingly engages in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to a person, or persons, other than himself, and thereby causes the death of another." (Emphasis reflects the 1981 additions.) In 1988, we upheld the amended statute against a challenge similar to the one we had found persuasive in Marcy. People v. Jefferson, 748 P.2d 1223 (Colo.1988).

Although the language added by the legislature did not unambiguously avoid the equal protection difficulties we identified in Marcy, see Jefferson, 748 P.2d at 1234-37 (Quinn, J., dissenting), in light of the legislature's express reintroduction of the term "universal malice" and its clear intent, in the wake of Marcy, to define an offense distinguishable from, and of greater social consequence than, second degree murder, we understood its 1981 amendments as an attempt "to connect" this subsection with the state's earliest statutory proscription of depraved-heart murder. See Jefferson, 748 P.2d at 1231. We therefore construed the added language to proscribe killing acts of a particular description rather than attempting to carve out a new or intermediate culpable mental state. Id. at 1232. We found that the legislature had adequately differentiated subsection (1)(d) and second degree murder by limiting this particular form of first degree murder to conduct that, by its very nature and the circumstances of its commission, evidences a willingness to take human life indiscriminately, without knowing or caring who the victim may be or without having an understandable motive or provocation. Id. at 1233.

In Marcy, we equated knowingly engaging in conduct creating a grave risk of death and thereby causing death, even under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life, with knowingly causing the...