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729 P.2d 972

People v. Thomas

Supreme Court of Colorado

Decided December 15, 1986

Supreme Court of Colorado · decided 1986-12-15

Relies on People v. Krovarz

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1986-12-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 26 later decisions — most recently May 2019 · most notably People v. Hall (2000), Moore v. People (1996)

26 state decisions

1101986199020002010decided

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.

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DUBOFSKY, Justice,

¶1specially concurring:

¶2I join the majority opinion under the facts of this case. People v. Krovarz, 697 P.2d 378, 381 n. 9 (Colo.1985), suggests that the analysis employed in that case should not be extended to attempted reckless conduct. The footnote in Krovarzreflected the concern of a commentator who observed that allowing one to be charged with attempted murder under the wide range of conduct encompassed within “reckless,” without a resulting death, may extend criminal liability for harmful conduct to situations such as driving very fast on the wrong side of the road while going around a curve. Enker, Mens Rea and Criminal Attempt, 1977 Am.Bar Found. Res.J. 845, 854. The conduct is not in fact harmful if there is no traffic coming in the opposite direction. Id.The commentator suggested that where the actor risks harm, rather than intending harm, the conduct should be penalized under a legislative definition of a substantive crime instead of the common law definition of attempt. Id. at 859. Given the facts in this case, however, I am convinced that the defendant came close enough to intending harm that he can be convicted of attempted reckless manslaughter.

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