A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision affecting how defendants are sentenced under Colorado’s “three strikes” law does not benefit people whose convictions have long been final, the state’s second-highest court ruled on Thursday.

For many years, Colorado’s Habitual Criminal Act required judges to impose three or four times the maximum sentence if a defendant was convicted of a felony and had multiple prior felonies. Those prior convictions must arise “out of separate and distinct criminal episodes.” Before 1995, juries made that determination, but legislators changed the law that year to entrust judges with the task.

Then, in 2024, the Supreme Court called into question Colorado’s method of enhancing defendants’ sentences under the three-strikes law. By 6-3, the justices ruled in Erlinger v. United States that the U.S. Constitution requires juries to decide beyond a reasonable doubt whether a defendant committed prior felonies on separate occasions.

The legislature has since revised the three strikes law to clarify that juries must be involved.

But what did the Erlinger decision mean for people whose convictions became final before the Supreme Court’s ruling?

A Jefferson County jury convicted Delano Marco Medina in 2015 of assault-related offenses. A judge imposed a 44-year sentence under the habitual criminal law.

After the Erlinger decision, Medina, representing himself, moved to dismiss the habitual criminal components of his case because he had not received a jury’s consideration of his prior convictions.

In a November 2024 order, District Court Judge Chantel Contiguglia concluded that Medina’s three-strikes sentence would be unconstitutional if Erlinger applied retroactively.

She noted that the Supreme Court had recognized a new constitutional rule. But, to be retroactive, it would need to alter the scope of conduct that the state has the power to punish. Contiguglia determined the Erlinger decision did not do that.

Alternatively, retroactivity would apply to a “watershed” rule, meaning the likelihood of accurately convicting someone would be jeopardized in the rule’s absence. Contiguglia believed that letting a judge analyze the existence of prior “separate and distinct criminal episodes” did not seriously affect the accuracy of Medina’s convictions.

“What is considered to be ‘separate occasions’ is ultimately subjective, and without guidance from the common law or legislature on precisely what ‘separate occasions’ means, juries will diverge on their interpretation of the meaning of ‘separate occasions’,” she wrote, “just as judges will.”

A three-judge Court of Appeals panel agreed that the new constitutional rule from the Supreme Court did not apply retroactively to defendants like Medina.

“The rule announced in Erlinger is procedural, not substantive. It doesn’t alter the range of conduct or the class of persons the law punishes,” wrote Judge Christina F. Gomez in the May 7 opinion. “Rather, it solely affects the manner of determining a defendant’s punishment by allocating decision-making authority between a judge and a jury on an issue affecting habitual sentencing.”

She added that the prior system also did not create a risk of injustice to defendants.

The case is People v. Medina.