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707 P.2d 990

Moore v. People

Supreme Court of Colorado

Decided November 12, 1985

Supreme Court of Colorado · decided 1985-11-12

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“in accordance with the same procedural and constitutional safeguards traditionally associated with a trial on guilt or innocence.”

quoted by 2 later decisions, including People v. Edwards, People v. Deroulet

Relies on Spaziano v. Florida · People v. Quintana

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1985-11-12

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently June 2010

7 state decisions

301985199020002010decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

ROVIRA, Justice,

¶1specially concurring:

¶2I concur in the opinion of the court. I write separately only to emphasize my understanding that nothing in the court’s opinion suggests there is a constitutional requirement that a habitual criminal proceeding be tried before a jury. I believe that the right to a jury trial in such a proceeding is statutorily based.

¶3The legislature has recognized that habitual criminal status warrants strict statutory procedures for its determination. In People v. Quintana, 634 P.2d 413, 419 (Colo.1981), we recognized that if constitutional type procedural safeguards attach to the statutory right to a jury trial in habitual criminal proceedings it is only because it was the “legislative intent to require that an adjudication of habitual criminality be made only in accordance with the same procedural and constitutional safeguards traditionally associated with a trial on guilt or innocence.”

¶4Determining whether a person is a habitual criminal is a sentencing proceeding. The constitutional right to a jury trial applies to trials on the issue of guilt or innocence. It does not apply to sentencing proceedings. E.g., Spaziano v. Florida, — U.S. -, 104 S.Ct. 3154, 82 L.Ed.2d 340 (1984) (neither sixth nor eighth, nor fourteenth amendments require jury sentencing in death penalty cases). Certainly, if there is no right to a jury in a capital sentencing ease, there is no such right in a habitual criminal sentencing proceeding.

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