The Colorado Supreme Court has agreed to review a pair of cases that call into question how old a child victim must be for their statements outside of the courtroom to be admissible at trial.

The first appeal from Dennis R. Chirinos-Raudales comes in the wake of his 2017 convictions for sexually assaulting a child. The trial court judge in Denver allowed a videotaped forensic interview of the child, in which she discussed her abuse, to play during the jury trial.

Chirinos-Raudales argued on appeal that the video was not permitted under the statute prohibiting hearsay, which encompasses statements offered as evidence outside of trial testimony. There is an exception to that rule for children who are under 15 years old. Because the victim had just turned 15 when she sat for the interview, the defense argued, the exception should not apply.

However, a three-judge panel for the Court of Appeals disagreed with that view earlier this year. The panel noted a further exception applied to children if the criminal offense at hand used a different age to define a child. Among Chirinos-Raudales’ charges was the crime of sexual assault on a child by someone in a a position of trust. Under that law, a child is anyone under 18 years old.

The Supreme Court indicated it would review whether the victim’s status as a 15-year-old should have determined whether her videotaped statements were admissible at trial.

The justices also will review the Court of Appeals’ decision that Chirinos-Raudales should serve concurrent sentences for two of his convictions, rather than consecutive sentences. The two charges, the panel determined, were based on the same criminal act with identical evidence. State law requires that courts impose concurrent sentences in such cases, except when multiple victims are involved.

Finally, the Court of Appeals reversed one of Chirinos-Raudales’ convictions from the trial because, for unexplained reasons, the trial court judge did not instruct the jury on the offense, nor did the jury return a verdict. Prosecutors and the defense both agreed the faulty conviction could not stand. The appellate panel opted to vacate the conviction and sentence, and it is not an issue in the appeal to the Supreme Court.

The case is Chirinos-Raudales v. People.

The justices will also hear the appeal of Jose Leonel Orellana-Leon, whose case the Court of Appeals decided on the same day as Chirinos-Raudales’. Similarly, the victim was 15 years old when she told her parents and a forensic interviewer about Orellana-Leon’s sexual abuse.

The trial judge in Boulder County allowed all of those statements to be admitted at trial and a jury convicted Orellana-Leon. The separate appeals panel that considered his case rejected the defense’s argument that 15 years of age, rather than 18 years, was the correct cutoff for allowing hearsay evidence from a child.

Using the Chirinos-Raudales decision, the panel upheld Orellana-Leon’s conviction.

The case is Orellana-Leon v. People.