Colorado v. Baker
Annotate this CaseIn 2011, Douglas Baker was arrested on a then-outstanding 2009 warrant for sexual assault on a child, pattern of abuse, a class three felony. When Baker learned that he was facing arrest, he fled to Florida. He was extradited to Colorado, and booked into jail where he remained in custody for the duration of the case. Baker pled guilty to one count of sexual assault on a child, position of trust, a class three felony, and, in 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. The issue his case presented for the Colorado Supreme Court's review centered on whether a defendant’s claim that he was entitled to more presentence confinement credit (“PSCC”) than he originally received was properly understood as a challenge to a sentence “not authorized by law” under Crim. P. 35(a). The Court concluded that it was not: "PSCC is not a component of a sentence; instead, it is time served before a sentence is imposed, which is later credited against the defendant’s sentence. This conclusion does not mean that defendants have no avenue to seek correction of an improper calculation of PSCC." Here, all parties agreed that both the parties and the court overlooked Baker’s eighteen missing days of PSCC. Rule 36 would have been the appropriate route to correct the calculation error. Accordingly, the Court reversed and remanded the case with directions to return it to the district court.
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