Halaseh v. Colorado
Annotate this CaseJohn Halaseh petitioned the Colorado Supreme Court for review of a court of appeals' remand order which directed the trial court to enter four convictions for class 4 felony theft in place of the single conviction of class 3 felony theft reflected in the charge and jury verdict. The intermediate appellate court reversed the conviction for class 3 felony theft on the grounds that when the statutory authorization for aggregating separate acts of theft was properly applied, there was insufficient evidence to support a single conviction for theft of $20,000 or more. It also found, however, that there was sufficient evidence to support four separate convictions for aggregated thefts with values qualifying as class 4 felonies, and that substituting these four class 4 felony convictions for the vacated class 3 felony conviction was necessary to fulfill what it understood to be its obligation to maximize the effect of the jury’s verdict. The Supreme Court disapproved of the appellate court's revision to Halaseh's sentence, finding that no such offense was implicitly found by the jury, and therefore none could be entered in lieu of the reversed conviction without depriving defendant of his right to a jury trial. The matter was remanded with directions to simply reverse the conviction for a class 3 felony theft.
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