Colorado v. Baker
Annotate this CaseAt issue before the Colorado Supreme Court was whether respondent Douglas Baker was entitled to additional presentence confinement credit (“PSCC”) than he originally received. Baker was arrested in Florida in 2011 for the 2009 Colorado sexual assault of a child, pattern of abuse, a class three felony. He was then extradited to Colorado where he was booked into the Jefferson County jail on July 15, 2011. He remained in custody for the duration of the case. Baker pleaded guilty to one count of sexual assault on a child, position of trust, a class three felony, and, on July 12, 2012, he was sentenced to a term of ten years to life in the custody of the Department of Corrections. The court awarded Baker 364 days of credit for time served and designated him a Sexually Violent Predator (“SVP”). At the sentencing hearing, Baker objected to the SVP finding and told the court that he would file a motion objecting to it. Baker, however, failed to file a motion objecting to his SVP status for over three years, and, in the interim, he never filed a direct appeal. Then in 2015, Baker filed a pro se motion, “Motion to Correct Sentence Pursuant to Crim. P. Rule 35(a).” In it, Baker argued he was not given PSCC for his time in custody in Florida before he was extradited to Colorado. The State agreed Baker was entitled to credit for that time and did not object to the court awarding Baker an additional eighteen days of PSCC. Approximately a year later, Baker filed another pro se motion based on Leyva v. Colorado, 184 P.3d 48 (2008), seeking to vacate his conviction as a sexually violent predator, because the “recent correction of his illegal sentence” meant a collateral attack to his conviction was not time barred. The district court denied Baker’s motion, and Baker appealed. The Supreme Court held that a challenge to PSCC was not cognizable as a claim that a sentence was not authorized by law pursuant to Rule 35(a). Because Baker’s postconviction claim for eighteen days of additional PSCC did not alter his sentence, it did not impact the finality of his original judgment of conviction. Baker’s Rule 35(c) motion, filed more than three years after the date of his conviction, was therefore untimely.
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