Peo v. Gonzales

• Court: Colorado Court of Appeals
• Decided: September 18, 2025
• Docket: 24CA1740
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

24CA1740 Peo v Gonzales 09-18-2025

COLORADO COURT OF APPEALS

Court of Appeals No. 24CA1740 El Paso County District Court No. 24CR1215 Honorable Monica J. Gomez, Judge

The People of the State of Colorado,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

Ignacio Gonzales,

Defendant-Appellant.

ORDER AFFIRMED

Division A Opinion by JUDGE GRAHAM* Román, C.J., and Berger*, J., concur

NOT PUBLISHED PURSUANT TO C.A.R. 35(e) Announced September 18, 2025

Philip J. Weiser, Attorney General, Jillian J. Price, Deputy Attorney General, Denver, Colorado, for Plaintiff-Appellee

Megan A. Ring, Colorado State Public Defender, Natalie Fine, Deputy State Public Defender, Colorado Springs, Colorado, for Defendant-Appellant

*Sitting by assignment of the Chief Justice under provisions of Colo. Const. art. VI, § 5(3), and § 24-51-1105, C.R.S. 2025. ¶1 Defendant, Ignacio Gonzales, appeals the district court’s

restitution order. We affirm.

I. Background

¶2 Gonzales was charged with one count each of second degree

assault and third degree assault based on allegations that, during

an argument about politics, he shoved his brother to the ground

and repeatedly hit him in the head with both a glass bottle and his

fists.

¶3 As part of a plea agreement, Gonzales agreed to plead guilty to

third degree assault, in exchange for dismissal of the remaining

count. The parties agreed to a two-year deferred judgment and

sentence, and Gonzales agreed to pay restitution. As relevant here,

the plea agreement provided that the prosecution would “submit the

proposed amount [of restitution] within 42 days of sentencing.”

¶4 The district court accepted the agreement and sentenced

Gonzales accordingly. The court also entered an order for

restitution but found “good cause” to allow the prosecution

forty-two days to submit its specific request.

¶5 The prosecution timely submitted its request for restitution in

the amount of $6,487.09 for medical expenses incurred by the

1 victim. Gonzalez objected to the amount requested and the district

court set the matter for a hearing. The hearing was scheduled for

August 8, 2024, seventy days after sentencing.

¶6 At the hearing, the prosecution elicited testimony from the

victim and the restitution coordinator for the El Paso County

District Attorney’s Office. The victim testified that his medical bills

totaled $8,151.60. He described each bill and what each bill was

for, and each of the medical bills were submitted into evidence,

without objection, as People’s Exhibit 1. The restitution coordinator

testified that the discrepancy between the original requested

amount ($6,487.09) and the amount the victim testified to

($8,515.60) was due to an “error” made by failing to include the bill

for the ambulance ride in the original restitution request. She

added that the ambulance bill had been provided to them by the

victim, was included with his victim impact statement, and was

provided in discovery.

¶7 Based on the testimony concerning the ambulance bill, the

prosecution orally moved to amend its restitution request to

$8,151.50. Gonzales objected. He argued that the prosecution’s

oral motion was beyond the court’s forty-two-day deadline for the

2 prosecution to submit its request for restitution, as well as “recent

authority from the Colorado Supreme Court about the timelines

that are supposed to be followed.” And he argued that the oral

motion was in violation of “his Colorado and United States

Constitutional rights” and the restitution statute.

¶8 The district court granted the motion to amend and

subsequently ordered restitution in the amount of $8,151.50. As

relevant here, the court found that “the People are within their

obligatory period in requesting additional restitution” and the

restitution determination is being made “within 91 days from the

time when [Gonzales] entered into his guilty plea.”

II. Discussion

¶9 Gonzales asserts that the district court erred when it allowed

the prosecution to modify its restitution request beyond the court’s

forty-two-day scheduling order, and that this error deprived him of

his right to due process. We disagree.

A. Standard of Review

¶ 10 We review de novo questions of statutory interpretation,

whether a court has authority to order a defendant to pay

restitution, and whether the court violated the defendant’s right to

3 due process. People v. Weeks, 2021 CO 75, ¶ 24; People v. Roddy,

2021 CO 74, ¶ 23; People v. Calderon, 2014 COA 144, ¶ 23.

Additionally, when a court has discretion to decide an issue, we

review that decision under an abuse of discretion standard. People

v. Rath, 44 P.3d 1033, 1043 (Colo. 2002). To constitute an abuse of

discretion, the court’s decision must be “manifestly arbitrary,

unreasonable, or unfair.” Id. A court necessarily abuses its

discretion if its ruling is based on an erroneous view of the law.

People v. Wadle, 97 P.3d 932, 936 (Colo. 2004).

B. Analysis

¶ 11 Every order of conviction “shall include consideration of

restitution.” § 18-1.3-603(1), C.R.S. 2024. The district court “shall

base its order for restitution upon information presented to the

court by the prosecuting attorney” and the prosecuting attorney

“shall present this information to the court prior to the order of

conviction or within ninety-one days, if it is not available prior to

the order of conviction.” § 18-1.3-603(2)(a).

¶ 12 Section 18-1.3-603(2)(a) “requires the prosecution to exercise

reasonable diligence to determine the amount of restitution and

present it to the court at or before the sentencing hearing.” People

4 v. Brassill, 2024 COA 19, ¶ 30; see People v. Martinez Rubier, 2024

COA 67, ¶ 38; see also § 18-1.3-603(2)(a). If the prosecution does

not meet this requirement, however, the district court does not

automatically lose authority to enter restitution. See Brassill,

¶¶ 56-61; see also Martinez Rubier, ¶¶ 46-47.

¶ 13 Instead, it may not be an abuse of the district court’s

discretion to establish a procedure to resolve restitution and accept

a late restitution motion — so long as restitution is resolved within

the ninety-one-day deadline. See Brassill, ¶¶ 56-61 (describing

denial of a restitution request for violating the district court’s

scheduling order as a “severe sanction” and affirming the district

court’s decision to accept a late restitution motion and order

restitution ninety days after the sentencing hearing).

¶ 14 At Gonzales’s sentencing hearing, the district court entered an

order under section 18-1.3-603(1)(b), reserving the amount of

restitution to be determined within ninety-one days. The court

instructed the prosecution to submit a request within forty-two

days, giving the defense twenty-one days to object. The prosecution

timely submitted its request for restitution, but when an error in

the request was discovered during the restitution hearing, the

5 prosecutor moved for the court to amend the original request. The

court did so, and the restitution amount was finalized seventy days

after Gonzales’s sentencing. Thus, whether the court had authority

to enter the restitution order is not at issue here.

¶ 15 Instead, Gonzales asserts that the prosecution failed to comply

with the district court’s forty-two-day deadline and the scheduling

mandate in Weeks, requiring vacatur of the restitution order

subsequently entered by the court. But a prosecutor’s failure to

comply with a scheduling order does not deprive the court of

authority to impose restitution. Brassill, ¶ 61. Indeed “district

courts have inherent authority to manage their dockets through

scheduling orders.” People v. Owens, 2014 CO 58M, ¶ 16; Brassill,

¶ 17; see also People v. Kilgore, 2020 CO 6, ¶ 26 (district courts

have inherent discretion to manage cases); Redden v. SCI Colo.

Funeral Servs., Inc., 38 P.3d 75, 84 (Colo. 2001) (district courts are

responsible for managing their dockets, moving cases toward

completion, and assuring that parties comply with deadlines).

¶ 16 While the prosecution failed to provide restitution information

within the forty-two-day deadline ordered by the district court, the

error was due to an error by the prosecution’s restitution

6 coordinator for failing to include the ambulance bill in its original

request. And unlike the prosecutor in Brassill, who “did not even

attempt to argue that his failure was the product of excusable

neglect,” Brassill, ¶ 54, the prosecutor here argued that this was

not an “attempt to pad the stats” or “some nefarious plot . . . to

make a windfall,” and instead urged the court to order the full

amount of economic losses requested by the victim, including the

ambulance bill, to make the victim whole and effectuate “the goal[s]

of sentencing, and . . . of ordering restitution in criminal cases.”

¶ 17 In resolving the prosecution’s motion, the district court

acknowledged the legislative declaration that all victims of crime

“endure undue suffering and hardship” and that persons “found

guilty of causing such suffering and hardship should be under a

moral and legal obligation to make full restitution to those harmed

by their misconduct.” § 18-1.3-601(1)(a), (b), C.R.S. 2024. The

court also acknowledged that “[a]n effective criminal justice system

requires timely restitution to victims of crime.” § 18-1.3-601(1)(e).

And because the court found that the issue of restitution would be

resolved within the statutory deadline, the court elected to grant the

prosecution’s request to modify the original amount of restitution to

7 include the ambulance bill. Under these circumstances, we cannot

say that the district court abused its discretion. See Brassill, ¶ 60.

¶ 18 We disagree that Gonzales was deprived of his due process

rights by the district court’s decision to accept the prosecution’s

belated request for restitution for the ambulance bill beyond the

court’s scheduling deadline.

¶ 19 A defendant is entitled to receive adequate notice of the

claimed amount of damages and the amount of restitution that the

prosecution is asking the court to impose. People v. Stone, 2020

COA 24, ¶ 59. Due process is satisfied, in the restitution context,

when the defendant receives notice of the factual basis for the

restitution and a reasonable opportunity to contest that basis. See

People v. Perez, 2020 COA 83, ¶ 49, overruled on other grounds by

Weeks, ¶ 47 n.16, cert. granted, judgment vacated on other grounds,

and case remanded, (Colo. No. 20SC559, Dec. 6, 2021)

(unpublished order).

¶ 20 Gonzales argues that while the ambulance bill was submitted

with the victim impact statement, “a Victim Impact Statement is not

the same as a proposed restitution order filed by the prosecution”

and therefore, he did not have meaningful notice of the full amount

8 of restitution. Nevertheless, Gonzales agrees that he received the

victim impact statement, which included a request for restitution

based on the ambulance bill. Cf. People v. Barbre, 2018 COA 123, ¶

40 (“[U]nder Colorado law, an award of restitution may be based

solely on a victim impact statement.”). Gonzales knew from the

probable cause affidavit that the victim was transported to the

hospital in an ambulance. See Crim. P. 16(a)(1)(I) (“The prosecuting

attorney shall make available to the defense . . . [p]olice, arrest and

crime or offense reports . . . .”) And his counsel admitted at the

restitution hearing that he received the ambulance bill on July 12,

2024, almost a month before the August 8 restitution hearing.

¶ 21 Even if Gonzales had no opportunity to review and prepare a

challenge to the ambulance bill, Gonzales’s counsel could have, but

did not, request a continuance of the restitution hearing within the

statutory deadline if she felt that she needed more time to

investigate or contest the ambulance bill. See People v. Anderson,

837 P.2d 293, 299 (Colo. App. 1992) (a failure to request a

continuance or ask for more time in the district court belies an

assertion of surprise on appeal); see also People v. Ortiz, 2016 COA

58, ¶ 30 (“[T]he court did not deny defendant the opportunity to

9 rebut the prosecution’s evidence; defendant simply chose not to try

to do so.”).

¶ 22 Because Gonzales received sufficient notice of the

prosecution’s intent to seek restitution, the basis of its claim, and

an opportunity to contest it, due process was satisfied.

III. Disposition

¶ 23 The order is affirmed.

CHIEF JUDGE ROMÁN and JUDGE BERGER concur.