Peo v. Mendinghall

Opinion

25CA0118 Peo v Mendinghall 08-20-2026 COLORADO COURT OF APPEALS

Court of Appeals No. 25CA0118 City and County of Denver District Court No. 21CR421 Honorable Ericka F.H. Englert, Judge

The People of the State of Colorado, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Vincent Mendinghall, Defendant-Appellant.

ORDERS AFFIRMED

Division IV

Opinion by JUDGE SCHOCK

Welling and Lum, JJ., concur

NOT PUBLISHED PURSUANT TO C.A.R. 35(e)

Announced August 20, 2026

Philip J. Weiser, Attorney General, Marixa Frias, Assistant Attorney General, Denver, Colorado, for Plaintiff-Appellee

Vincent Mendinghall, Pro Se

¶1 Defendant, Vincent Mendinghall, appeals the district court’s orders denying his motion to correct a clerical mistake in his sentence under Crim. P. 36 and a subsequent C.R.C.P. 60 motion seeking similar relief. He argues, under various legal theories, that the district court erred by sentencing him to eight years in prison upon revocation of his probation after previously imposing a suspended sentence of five years. Because there is no clerical mistake in need of correction, we affirm the district court’s orders.

I. Background

¶2 Mendinghall pleaded guilty to second degree assault and admitted it was an act of domestic violence pursuant to a plea agreement. He stipulated to a sentence of two years of probation with a sentence of five to eight years in prison suspended on the condition that he successfully complete probation. The district court accepted the plea agreement and sentenced Mendinghall to two years of probation and a five-year suspended prison sentence.

¶3 Two weeks later, the probation department filed a complaint to revoke Mendinghall’s probation based on allegations that he had committed a new criminal offense involving the same victim.

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Mendinghall admitted to the violation, and the district court revoked his probation and resentenced him to eight years in prison.

¶4 Mendinghall then filed a motion for reconsideration of his sentence under Crim. P. 35(b) and a motion to correct an illegal sentence under Crim. P. 35(a). Both motions alleged, among other things, that Mendinghall should have received a five-year sentence after his probation was revoked. The district court denied both motions in written orders, and Mendinghall did not appeal.

¶5 After the district court denied the Crim. P. 35(a) motion, Mendinghall filed the two motions at issue in this appeal. He first filed a Crim. P. 36 motion that asked the court to “correct” the current eight-year prison sentence and sentence him to “the oral pronouncement sentence of five . . . years.” The district court denied that motion, concluding that there was no clerical error to be corrected because Mendinghall had been advised that his sentence could be up to eight years and was sentenced to eight years.

¶6 Mendinghall then filed a “supplemental motion” to set aside the order denying his Crim. P. 35(a) motion under C.R.C.P. 60. He again asked the court to “[c]orrect” his sentence to the “original order” of five years in prison. The court denied this motion as well.

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II. Scope of Appeal

¶7 We first note that the only orders that are at issue in this appeal are (1) the order denying Mendinghall’s Crim. P. 36 motion, entered on December 6, 2024; and (2) the order denying Mendinghall’s C.R.C.P. 60 motion, entered on December 17, 2024.

¶8 Specifically, we lack jurisdiction to review the order denying Mendinghall’s Crim. P. 35(a) motion because Mendinghall did not timely appeal that order. See People v. Baker, 104 P.3d 893, 895 (Colo. 2005) (“Unless notice of appeal is timely filed, the court of appeals lacks jurisdiction to hear the appeal.”). That order was entered on November 12, 2024, meaning the notice of appeal had to be filed by December 31, 2024. See C.A.R. 4(b)(1) (requiring notice of appeal to be filed within forty-nine days after entry of order being appealed). Mendinghall filed his notice of appeal on January 21, 2025 (or January 13, 2025, applying the prison mailbox rule).

¶9 Because Mendinghall’s notice of appeal was timely as to the December 6 order denying the Crim. P. 36 motion and the

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December 17 order denying the C.R.C.P. 60 motion, we address Mendinghall’s arguments to the extent they relate to those orders.1 III. Legality of Original Probation Sentence

¶ 10 For the first time on appeal, Mendinghall argues that his original two-year probation sentence was not authorized by law because the length of the probationary term was outside the five-to- sixteen-year sentencing range for second degree assault.2

¶ 11 Illegal sentence claims may be raised for the first time on appeal. People v. Torres, 141 P.3d 931, 936 (Colo. App. 2006). But Mendinghall’s challenge to the original probationary sentence is moot because the district court later revoked the probation and imposed a lawful sentence within the applicable sentencing range.

1 Although this appeal is timely as to the order denying the C.R.C.P.

60 motion, Mendinghall does not make any argument specifically relating to that order. Any claims that Mendinghall raised in his C.R.C.P. 60 motion and did not reassert on appeal are abandoned. See People v. Osorio, 170 P.3d 796, 801 (Colo. App. 2007).

2 Mendinghall pleaded guilty to second degree assault with a deadly

weapon, a per se crime of violence and extraordinary risk crime. See § 18-3-203(2)(c)(II), C.R.S. 2025; 18-1.3-401(10)(b)(XII), C.R.S. 2025. The sentencing range for that offense is five to sixteen years. See § 18-3-203(2)(c)(II); § 18-1.3-406(1)(a), C.R.S. 2025; see also People v. Espinoza, 990 P.2d 1117, 1119 (Colo. App. 1999) (“[S]econd degree assault is an extraordinary risk class four felony with a minimum presumptive range sentence of five years . . . .”).

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See People v. Fritz, 2014 COA 108, ¶ 23 (“[B]ecause the new legal sentence necessarily supersedes the original sentence, our determination of whether his sentence was illegal would not have any practical effect on this case.”). We therefore decline to address the legality of Mendinghall’s original probationary sentence. See People v. Calderon, 2014 COA 144, ¶ 9.

IV. Correction of Sentence

¶ 12 Mendinghall next argues that the district court’s oral pronouncement of a five-year suspended sentence “prevails” over the eight-year sentence that the district court imposed after revoking Mendinghall’s probation. He contends that this purported error should be corrected under Crim. P. 36. We disagree.

¶ 13 When the district court revokes a defendant’s probation, it has broad discretion to impose any sentence that could originally have been imposed. § 16-11-206(5), C.R.S. 2025; People v. Propst, 2021 COA 13, ¶ 13. In exercising that discretion, it is not bound by the term of an original suspended sentence. See Propst, ¶ 20. Rather, upon revocation of probation, the court is “statutorily authorized to impose any sentence or grant any probation that might originally have been imposed or granted, regardless of the fact that probation

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was imposed as a condition of suspending a specific sentence of imprisonment.” Fierro v. People, 206 P.3d 460, 465 (Colo. 2009).

¶ 14 The district court found — and Mendinghall does not contest — that Mendinghall violated the terms of his probation. Thus, upon revoking Mendinghall’s probation, the district court had broad discretion to resentence him to a prison term anywhere in the five-to-sixteen-year statutory range. See Propst, ¶ 20. Because Mendinghall’s eight-year sentence is within that range, it contains no clerical or other error requiring correction under Crim. P. 36.

V. Reliance on New Conduct

¶ 15 Mendinghall also contends that the district court erred by increasing his sentence based on facts found at the resentencing hearing, in violation of his constitutional rights. But this claim is, in substance, a Crim. P. 35(c) claim, see People v. Wenzinger, 155 P.3d 415, 418-19 (Colo. App. 2006), and Mendinghall did not advance it in either of the two motions at issue in this appeal. We therefore may not consider it.3 See People v Cali, 2020 CO 20, ¶ 34.

3 We note, however, that Mendinghall’s eight-year sentence did not

exceed the statutory maximum for his offense based on the facts he admitted in his plea agreement. See People v. Wenzinger, 155 P.3d 415, 420-21 (Colo. App. 2006).

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VI. Disposition

¶ 16 The orders are affirmed.

JUDGE WELLING and JUDGE LUM concur.