Colorado v. Bott
Annotate this CaseThe Court of Appeals vacated eleven of Joshua Bott's twelve convictions for sexual exploitation of a child by possession of sexually exploitative material. Relying on language from the statute's legislative declaration and appellate decisional law predating then-current amendments to the statute, the trial court denied Bott’s motion to dismiss all but one of these exploitation counts as multiplicitous, finding that the legislature intended to permit conviction for each single incident of victimization. The court of appeals disagreed, finding instead that the applicable unit of prosecution was determined by the legislature when it chose to amend the statute to designate the act of possessing more than twenty different items qualifying as sexually exploitative material a class 4 felony. Accordingly, the court of appeals held Bott’s conviction of multiple class 4 felonies for possessing separate items numbering multiple times greater than twenty violated his constitutional protection against being subjected to jeopardy more than once for the same crime. Finding that the statute at issue "makes clear" the legislature's intent that possession of any number of items exceeding twenty that qualified as sexually exploitative material constituted a single offense. Accordingly, the appellate court's judgment was affirmed.
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