23CA0857 Peo v Anderson 07-09-2026
COLORADO COURT OF APPEALS
Court of Appeals No. 23CA0857 Adams County District Court No. 20CR3540 Honorable Mark Warner, Judge
The People of the State of Colorado,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
Cornelious Anderson,
Defendant-Appellant.
ORDER REVERSED AND CASE REMANDED WITH DIRECTIONS
Division VI Opinion by JUDGE GROVE Gomez and Moultrie, JJ., concur
NOT PUBLISHED PURSUANT TO C.A.R. 35(e) Announced July 9, 2026
Philip J. Weiser, Attorney General, Jacob R. Lofgren, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Denver, Colorado, for Plaintiff-Appellee
Megan A. Ring, Colorado State Public Defender, Emily Hessler, Deputy State Public Defender, Denver, Colorado, for Defendant-Appellant ¶1 Defendant, Cornelious Anderson, appeals the district court’s
restitution order. We reverse the order and remand to the court for
further findings.
I. Background
¶2 On September 6, 2020, Anderson shot and injured the victim
during a failed robbery attempt in a motel parking lot. As a result
of the shooting, the victim needed multiple surgeries, lost his
spleen, and was left paralyzed from the waist down.
¶3 A jury convicted Anderson of attempted second degree murder,
first degree assault, attempted aggravated robbery, and two crime of
violence counts.
¶4 Before sentencing, the prosecution filed a motion for
restitution, requesting, as relevant here, $62,563.16 payable to the
Minnesota Department of Human Services (MDHS).1 The
prosecution attached to the motion a letter from MDHS indicating
that it had paid $62,563.16 in “medical expenses . . . related to the
1 In this motion, the prosecution also requested $15,254.80 in
restitution payable to the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing. However, the prosecution never sought a ruling on that request, and the district court did not address it. We therefore do not consider it further.
1 [victim’s] injury of 09/06/2020.” Attached to the letter was a
119-page “claims history profile,” which listed various diagnosis
codes and claim payments for the victim’s medical services from
October 2020 to September 2022.
¶5 At the beginning of the sentencing hearing on November 30,
2022, defense counsel asked the district court to set a restitution
hearing “so we can contest the amount.” The court then sentenced
Anderson to an aggregate forty-eight-year term in prison. The court
scheduled a restitution hearing for February 2023.
¶6 In the mittimus the district court issued that day, there was
no mention of restitution. And in a minute order also issued on the
day of sentencing, the court only said that the “matter [was] set for
[a] restitution . . . hearing.”
¶7 Anderson was not present at the February 10, 2023,
restitution hearing because the prosecution failed to secure his
appearance via a writ. The court continued the hearing to February
27, 2023 — a date still within the ninety-one-day statutory period.
When Anderson did not appear at the rescheduled hearing, the
prosecutor told the court that he had refused to be transported
from the jail. The court found good cause to continue the hearing a
2 second time to April 7, 2023, which was past the ninety-one-day
deadline to impose restitution.
¶8 At the April 7 hearing, defense counsel asserted that the
district court had “lost jurisdiction” because more than ninety-one
days had passed since sentencing. The court rejected this
argument, explaining that it had previously found good cause to
extend the deadline.
¶9 The prosecutor said he would not be calling witnesses and
asked the district court to impose restitution based on the
filings.Defense counsel objected, arguing that the restitution filings
were insufficient to establish proximate cause. She reasoned that
there was no documentation regarding how MDHS “filter[ed]” the
costs; pointed out that the billing records covered periods of time
“well beyond the date of the offense”; and argued that the files did
not demonstrate how the costs related to Anderson’s actions.
¶ 10 In response, the prosecutor explained that the restitution
request was from “Minnesota’s version of Medicare.” He said that
“the People had reached out to the health treatment facility
overseeing the [victim’s] recovery” and that the facility had provided
3 information about “necessary treatments” that were a “direct result”
of Anderson’s actions.
¶ 11 The district court said that it had reviewed the documentation
and the court file and found that the prosecution had proved by a
preponderance of the evidence that Anderson proximately caused
the claimed losses. The court relied on the submitted
documentation, including the letter that said the expenses were
“related to” the victim’s injuries from September 6, 2020, as well as
the verdicts. One hundred and twenty-nine days after sentencing,
the court ordered restitution paid to MDHS for $62,563.16. The
court did not issue an updated mittimus to reflect restitution.
II. Statutory Violations
¶ 12 Anderson contends that the restitution order should be
vacated because the district court: (1) lost authority to impose
restitution when it failed to enter an order or make any finding of
liability at sentencing consistent with section 18-1.3-603(1)(b),
C.R.S. 2020; and (2) imposed restitution after the statutory
4 ninety-one-day deadline without an adequate and supported good
cause finding.2 We disagree on both counts.
A. Applicable Law
¶ 13 Under section 18-1.3-603(1), every judgment of conviction
must contain one of four orders regarding restitution: (1) an order
requiring a specific amount of restitution; (2) an order that the
defendant is obligated to pay restitution but reserving the question
of the amount of restitution owed for up to ninety-one days; (3) an
order fixing restitution and requiring the defendant to pay certain
future costs; or (4) a finding that no victim suffered a pecuniary loss
and therefore no restitution order is being entered. People v.
Weeks, 2021 CO 75, ¶ 3. A sentence that fails to include one of
these four restitution orders is a sentence not authorized by law
2 At the time of the offenses in 2020, district courts had ninety-one
days following the order of conviction to determine a specific amount of restitution. § 18-1.3-603(1)(b), C.R.S. 2020. In 2025, the General Assembly amended the deadline such that courts must determine a specific amount of restitution within sixty-three days following the later of (1) the prosecution’s presentation of restitution information or (2) the order of conviction. Ch. 307, sec. 1, § 18-1.3-603(1)(b), 2025 Colo. Sess. Laws 1606. All citations to section 18-1.3-603 in this opinion are to the 2020 statute.
5 under Crim. P. 35(a) that may be corrected at any time. Tennyson
v. People, 2025 CO 31, ¶ 2 (Tennyson II).
¶ 14 An order entered under section 18-1.3-603(1)(b) — reserving
the question of the amount of restitution owed — requires the
judgment of conviction to assign liability for restitution, even
though the amount is determined later. See Sanoff v. People, 187
P.3d 576, 578 (Colo. 2008). Section 18-1.3-603(1) does not
“authorize the court to address the issue of restitution in a
judgment of conviction by entering an order deferring that issue in
its entirety.” Weeks, ¶ 30. Rather, section 18-1.3-603(1)(b) “allows
the court to shelve the determination of the amount of restitution
after entering a preliminary order requiring restitution.” Id.
¶ 15 After a district court enters an order under section
18-1.3-603(1)(b), it must still determine the amount of restitution
owed within ninety-one days after the judgment of conviction enters
unless, before the deadline expires, the court finds good cause for
extending the deadline. Weeks, ¶¶ 4-5, 39. Absent an express and
timely good cause finding, a court lacks authority to enter an order
fixing the amount of restitution once the statutory deadline has
expired. Id. at ¶ 45.
6 B. Preservation and Standard of Review
¶ 16 The parties dispute whether Anderson preserved this
argument for appeal. However, the parties acknowledge, and we
agree, that preservation is not required here because Anderson is
challenging the legality of his sentence. See Tennyson II, ¶ 2.
¶ 17 We review the legality of a sentence de novo. Id. at ¶ 23. We
likewise review de novo whether the district court correctly
interpreted and applied the restitution statute. Weeks, ¶ 24.
C. The Order at Sentencing Under Section 18-1.3-603(1)(b)
¶ 18 Anderson argues that, rather than entering an order under
section 18-1.3-603(1)(b) at sentencing, the district court “reserved
determination of whether restitution was owed at all.” He reasons
that the court said nothing at sentencing to indicate that he was
liable for restitution, and the mittimus contained no mention of
restitution.
¶ 19 We conclude for several reasons that the district court —
albeit implicitly — found that Anderson was liable for restitution at
the time of sentencing and entered an order to that effect under
section 18-1.3-603(1)(b).
7 ¶ 20 First, in response to the prosecution’s restitution request,
which was submitted before sentencing, defense counsel asked the
district court to set a restitution hearing to “contest the amount.”
The court granted Anderson’s request. Because it set a hearing to
allow Anderson to contest the amount of restitution owed, we can
infer that the court determined that Anderson was liable for
restitution in an amount that would be determined at the hearing.
See People v. Tennyson, 2023 COA 2, ¶ 37 (rejecting the defendant’s
argument that the district court impermissibly reserved the issue of
restitution in its entirety, in part because at sentencing the court
orally granted him time after the prosecution presented restitution
information to “challenge ‘the figure’ submitted”), aff’d, Tennyson II
(Tennyson I).
¶ 21 Second, the good cause finding and the ninety-one-day
deadline that the district court referenced appear in section
18-1.3-603(1)(b), which applies only when the court has assigned
liability but defers determination of the amount of restitution. And
the court said nothing to suggest that it was entering any of the
three other orders allowed under the restitution statute or that it
was reserving the issue of restitution in its entirety. See Weeks, ¶ 7
8 n.4 (When making express findings of good cause to extend the
court’s deadline, “talismanic incantations” are not necessary, and
“substance controls over form.”); cf. id. at ¶ 45 (concluding that the
trial court lacked authority to enter restitution, in part because it
granted the prosecution’s request to have the issue of restitution
“remain open” for ninety-one days after sentencing).
¶ 22 Third, although the mittimus did not mention restitution, we
do not agree that this omission means that the district court left
open the issue of restitution in its entirety. A court’s oral
pronouncement at sentencing takes precedence over the mittimus.
People v. Wiseman, 2017 COA 49M, ¶ 52. And here, the record
supports a conclusion that the district court found at sentencing
that Anderson would be liable for restitution. See Tennyson I, ¶ 37
(“We acknowledge that an order obligating Tennyson to pay
restitution was not included on Tennyson’s mittimus, as required
by Weeks. But the record here supports that at sentencing the
district court orally granted the prosecution ninety days ‘to
determine what restitution is due and owing.’ We read this
statement to mean that the court considered and ordered that
9 Tennyson was liable to pay restitution and the court reserved only
the determination of the restitution amount.”).
¶ 23 To be sure, the better practice would have been for the district
court to explicitly state that Anderson was liable for restitution and
that the court was only reserving the question of how much
restitution he must pay, and to include this on the mittimus.
Nonetheless, after considering the record as a whole, we conclude
that the district court implicitly found that Anderson was liable for
restitution and deferred only a determination of the specific amount
he owed for ninety-one days under section 18-1.3-603(1)(b). Cf.
Snow v. People, 2025 CO 32, ¶ 29 (“By contrast, here, the record of
the district court proceedings is barren of an explicit or implicit
finding of restitution liability either before or during the sentencing
hearing. Rather, the issue of restitution was conspicuously absent
from the plea agreement and the providency hearing, and the
colloquy between the court and the prosecution at the sentencing
hearing left no doubt that everyone intended to defer until after
sentencing the issue of restitution in its entirety.”). Anderson’s
argument that his sentence is illegal because the court “reserved
determination of whether restitution was owed at all” therefore fails.
10 D. The District Court’s Good Cause Finding
¶ 24 While conceding that the district court’s good cause finding to
reset the hearing past the ninety-one-day deadline to impose
restitution was made expressly and timely, Anderson asserts that it
was inadequate and unsupported by the record.
¶ 25 Anderson first takes exception with the prosecution’s failure to
writ him for the February 10 hearing, which left only nineteen days
for the district court to reschedule a hearing before the
ninety-one-day deadline expired. He argues that this apparent
oversight was “akin to a situation in which the prosecution fails to
file a restitution motion until the last minute, without justification,”
and maintains that there was no good cause to extend the court’s
ninety-one-day deadline under section 18-1.3-603(1)(b). However,
the prosecution’s failure to ensure Anderson’s appearance at the
February 10 hearing did not ultimately bear upon the court’s
subsequent decision to extend the ninety-one deadline. To the
contrary, the only consequence of Anderson’s absence on February
10 was that the court pushed the hearing back to February 27 — a
date still within the ninety-one-day statutory period.
11 ¶ 26 Next, Anderson challenges the district court’s reliance on the
prosecution’s assertion that he was not present at the February 27
hearing because he had refused the writ. He argues that the court
erred by finding good cause under 18-1.3-603(1)(b) based on his
absence because (1) the court did not find the prosecution’s
statement credible, and defense counsel suggested it was not; and
(2) nothing in the record establishes that Anderson’s absence was
not the result of the prosecution once again failing to execute a writ.
¶ 27 But the court did credit the prosecution’s representation
regarding Anderson’s refusal of the writ when it said it had no
“reason to disbelieve the representations of the district attorney.”
Moreover, at the end of the February 27 hearing, the prosecutor
told the court that, at 8:09 a.m. that morning, his office had
received the “exact communication” from the Adams County
sheriff’s office regarding the attempt to transport Anderson from the
jail to the courthouse.3 Defense counsel did not dispute the
prosecution’s statement. To the extent that Anderson offers
3 Although the court told the prosecutor he could “upload [the
communication] from the Adams County sheriff “into the [court] file,” it does not appear that the prosecutor ever did so.
12 potential scenarios on appeal to explain why the prosecution’s
representation would not have been credible, these are speculative
and lack record support.
¶ 28 In sum, there is nothing in the record to suggest that
Anderson’s failure to appear at the February 27 hearing was due to
anything other than his refusal of the writ. The expedited writ for
him to appear at the February 27 hearing was filed by the
prosecution and issued by the court on February 10, 2023. The
only thing defense counsel offered to refute the prosecution’s
representation was to say, “I don’t know that the Court has grounds
to rely on that representation.”
¶ 29 Despite Anderson’s contentions to the contrary, the district
court’s good cause finding was adequate and supported by the
record. The court found that, based on the “overall record,” it had
no reason to disbelieve that Anderson had refused the writ, and
because he was absent but wished to be present for a restitution
hearing — a right to which he was entitled, see People v.
Hernandez, 2019 COA 111, ¶ 24 — on the substantial amount
requested by the prosecution, there was good cause to continue to
hearing past the ninety-one-day deadline to impose restitution.
13 III. Proximate Cause
¶ 30 Anderson contends that the restitution order should be
vacated because the prosecution failed to present sufficient
evidence to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the
claimed losses were proximately caused by his conduct. He
specifically argues that the letter from MDHS only indicated that
the victim’s medical expenses were “related to” the injury from
September 6, 2020; that the claims history profile is “hardly
self-explanatory”; and that some of the claims appear not to be
attributable to the victim’s paralysis because they have diagnosis
codes related to substance abuse, general pain, meals, or
“unspecified” illnesses. Because the district court’s findings as to
the claims comprising the $62,563.16 award are insufficient for
appellate review, we remand the case to the district court for
clarification.
A. Preservation and Standard of Review
¶ 31 Although the People argue that Anderson only partially
preserved this claim for appeal, preservation was not necessary
because challenges to the sufficiency of evidence supporting
14 restitution may be raised for the first time on appeal. See McCoy v.
People, 2019 CO 44, ¶ 19.
¶ 32 In the restitution context, we review for clear error the district
court’s determination that the defendant proximately caused the
victim’s losses. Martinez v. People, 2024 CO 6M, ¶ 32. But when,
as here, a defendant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence
supporting the amount of restitution awarded — that is, a challenge
to the quantum of evidence provided to the court — our review is de
novo. See id. at ¶¶ 19-22. When conducting this review, we
determine “whether the evidence, both direct and circumstantial,
when viewed as a whole and in the light most favorable to the
prosecution, establishes by a preponderance of the evidence that
the defendant caused that amount of loss.” People v. Barbre, 2018
COA 123, ¶ 25.
B. Applicable Law
¶ 33 Criminal defendants must “make full restitution to those
harmed by their misconduct.” § 18-1.3-601(1)(b), C.R.S. 2025.
Restitution “means any pecuniary loss suffered by a victim . . .
proximately caused by an offender’s conduct . . . that can be
reasonably calculated and recompensed in money.”
15 § 18-1.3-602(3)(a), C.R.S. 2025. “Proximate cause in the context of
restitution is defined as a cause which in natural and probable
sequence produced the claimed injury and without which the
claimed injury would not have been sustained.” People v. Rivera,
250 P.3d 1272, 1274 (Colo. App. 2010).
¶ 34 The prosecution bears the burden of proving by a
preponderance of the evidence the victim’s losses and that the
victim’s losses were proximately caused by the defendant’s criminal
conduct. People v. Martinez-Chavez, 2020 COA 39, ¶ 14. The
prosecution may rely solely on documentary evidence to meet its
evidentiary burden. People in Interest of A.V., 2018 COA 138M,
¶ 35. “A fact is established by a preponderance of the evidence
when, upon consideration of all the evidence, the existence of that
fact is more probable than its nonexistence.” People v. Garner, 806
P.2d 366, 370 (Colo. 1991).
C. Analysis
¶ 35 MDHS said in its letter that it had spent $62,563.16 in
medical expenses “related to” the victim’s injuries from September
6, 2020, which were broken out by claim in the claims history
16 profile. But, as Anderson suggests, the notations on the claims
history profile are impossible to interpret without more information.
¶ 36 For example, aside from what appears to be five claims for
prescription medications, each of the other ninety-eight claims
includes one or more diagnosis codes. And all but four of those
claims have one of the diagnosis codes circled. Of those, twenty-
four claims have the code “[p]araplegia, unspecified” circled, which
could arguably be associated with the victim’s partial paralysis.
But thirty-nine other claims have a different code circled, like
“[c]hest pain, unspecified,” “[w]eakness,” “[o]ther chronic pain,” or
other specialized medical terms. Twenty of those thirty-nine claims
list “[p]araplegia, unspecified” as a code, but it is not circled. And
thirty-one separate claims have “[i]llness, unspecified” circled and
list no other codes.4
¶ 37 Furthermore, while most claims appear to be associated with
multiple diagnosis codes (including things like “[n]icotine
dependence”) and show some kind of breakdown of costs by line
4 In addition to the above, one record includes a single code of
“illness, unspecified,” and does not list any others, but it is not circled.
17 item, only one code is circled on each claim and, yet, the entire
claim total is circled.
¶ 38 And, perhaps most importantly, while all but one claim
includes a circled amount, the total of the circled amounts adds up
to $62,412.16, and not $62,563.16.
¶ 39 Whether we should assign special significance to the
inconsistently circled amounts and diagnosis codes is unclear.
What is clear, however, is that without additional factual findings
by the district court, we are unable to determine which claim
amounts make up the $62,563.16 restitution award. While the
letter from MDHS and the claims history profile are sufficient to
support a finding that at least some of the claims are related to the
victim’s injuries from the shooting, we cannot discern what those
supporting claims are. The court’s findings are therefore
insufficient for appellate review, and a remand is necessary. See
People v. D.F., 933 P.2d 9, 14 (Colo. 1997) (“When appellate review
is hindered by the absence of factual findings as to key contested
issues, or when unresolved evidentiary conflicts exist with regard to
material facts, we have remanded for further fact finding by the trial
court.”); Cronk v. Bowers, 2023 COA 68M, ¶ 33 (“Of course, the
18 court ‘must make sufficient findings to permit meaningful
appellate review.’” (quoting Carruthers v. Carrier Access Corp., 251
P.3d 1199, 1211 (Colo. App. 2010))).
IV. Correction of the Mittimus
¶ 40 The district court did not address restitution on the mittimus.
Accordingly, the court should amend the mittimus to reflect any
restitution that is ordered following the court’s additional factual
findings. See Crim. P. 36 (“Clerical mistakes in judgments, orders,
or other parts of the record . . . arising from oversight or omission
may be corrected by the court at any time . . . .”).
V. Disposition
¶ 41 The restitution order is reversed, and the case is remanded to
the district court to conduct further proceedings consistent with
this opinion.
JUDGE GOMEZ and JUDGE MOULTRIE concur.