Colorado’s second-highest court on Thursday reversed a man’s organized crime conviction in Douglas County in the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent directive about how a criminal “enterprise” must be proven.

At the same time, a three-judge panel for the Court of Appeals rejected Chauncey Price’s argument that his dual convictions for child pimping and patronizing a prostituted child violated his constitutional rights because they prohibit “essentially the same conduct.”

Price is serving a 304-year sentence after a jury convicted him in 2019 of multiple offenses related to prostitution and forgery. Price facilitated the prostitution of multiple victims, provided them with security and transportation in exchange for money, and manufactured counterfeit bills to use in purchases.

Case: People v. Price

Decided: October 19, 2023

Jurisdiction: Douglas County

Ruling: 3-0

Judges: Rebecca R. Freyre (author)

David H. Yun

W. Eric Kuhn

Background: State Supreme Court clarifies organized crime law, overturns conviction

Among his convictions was one count of violating the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act.

While Price’s appeal was pending, the state Supreme Court clarified that convictions under the law require prosecutors to prove the existence of a criminal enterprise with an ongoing structure, beyond the mere fact that people committed crimes together.

Because Price’s jury did not receive that instruction at the time they convicted him, the appellate panel overturned his organized crime conviction. It permitted the prosecution to retry him for that charge.

The panel rejected Price’s other challenges, including to the constitutionality of his child prostitution convictions.

Under the state constitution, it violates a defendant’s right to equal protection under the laws when two criminal statutes forbid identical conduct, but one carries a harsher penalty. The key in assessing constitutionality is whether a “person of average intelligence” can distinguish between the two prohibitions.

Price received a conviction for patronizing a prostituted child, which involves facilitating a child’s performance of sex acts in exchange for money. The law provides a sentence of four years to life in prison.

Pimping, on the other hand, criminalizes living off of the money generated by child prostitution. The penalty is four to 12 years in prison.

“Both crimes prohibit essentially the same conduct,” wrote defense attorney Lauretta A. Martin Neff. “No reasonable distinction exists between the two offenses as applied to Price who allegedly took money from and for the prostitution of a child.”

Addressing the issue for the first time ever, the appellate panel disagreed. Judge Rebecca R. Freyre noted pimping does not require that someone interact with a prostituted child in the first place.

“Here, the prosecutor relied on different evidence than that related to patronizing to argue that Price committed pimping,” she wrote in the Oct. 19 opinion. Specifically, there was evidence Price used his share of the prostitution money to pay for rent and basic needs, which was conduct specific to pimping.

Because Price’s pimping and patronizing convictions did not involve the same conduct punished differently, the panel found no constitutional violation.

The case is People v. Price.