Peo v. Mitchell

Opinion

23CA1524 Peo v Mitchell 07-25-2024

COLORADO COURT OF APPEALS

Court of Appeals No. 23CA1524

Douglas County District Court No. 19CR1231

Honorable Patricia D. Herron, Judge

The People of the State of Colorado,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

Troy Andrew Mitchell,

Defendant-Appellant.

ORDER AFFIRMED

Division A

Opinion by JUDGE HAWTHORNE*

Román, C.J., and Berger*, J., concur

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

Announced July 25, 2024

Philip J. Weiser, Attorney General, William G. Kozeliski, Senior Assistant

Attorney General, Denver, Colorado, for Plaintiff-Appellee

Rachel C. Funez, Alternate Defense Counsel, Glenwood 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. 2023.

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¶ 1 Defendant, Troy Andrew Mitchell, directly appeals the

sentencing court’s denial of his request for additional presentence

confinement credit (PSCC). We affirm.

I. Background

¶ 2 Mitchell and others stole credit cards from gym lockers in

multiple states and then purchased retail items with the stolen

cards. In August 2019, Mitchell was arrested in Washington on

charges of theft and identity theft committed in that state. In

November 2019, Douglas County, Colorado issued a $25,000 bond

warrant for Mitchell’s arrest based in part on charges of identity

theft and third degree burglary committed in Colorado.

¶ 3 In January 2022, Mitchell wrote two letters to the Douglas

County court, asserting that he was serving a fifty-five-month

sentence in Washington and that the outstanding Douglas County

warrant prevented his participation in work release. In his January

4, 2022, letter, he asked the court to quash the warrant “or come

get me.” His January 12, 2022, letter, which was accompanied by

Interstate Agreement on Detainers Act (IAD) paperwork from the

Washington Department of Corrections (WDOC), again asked to

quash the warrant “or be brought in to address it.” See

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§ 24-60-501, C.R.S. 2023 (enacting the IAD in Colorado); see also

Wash. Rev. Code § 9.100.010 (2023) (enacting the IAD in

Washington). The court denied the motion to quash without

discussing Mitchell’s request to address his Colorado charges.

¶ 4 The Douglas County prosecution lodged its warrant as a

detainer against Mitchell in Washington on January 5, 2023, and

extradited him to Colorado the following month. Mitchell pleaded

guilty to one count of identity theft and one count of third degree

burglary. The sentencing court ultimately imposed two concurrent

three-year prison sentences, to be served concurrently with ongoing

sentences in Washington and Oregon.

¶ 5 Regarding PSCC, the court acknowledged that Mitchell should

receive credit for the days he spent confined in Washington “if he

would have been subject to release from the other facility but for

our outstanding warrant.” It implicitly found that without a

detainer on the charges in this case, Mitchell could have been

released from WDOC. It granted 561 days of PSCC — reflecting the

number of days Mitchell was confined between his January 4,

2022, attempt to perfect his IAD rights and his July 19, 2023,

sentencing date.

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II. Discussion

¶ 6 Mitchell contends, as he did at sentencing, that he is entitled

to PSCC for every day he was confined in Washington after Douglas

County issued an arrest warrant, which, according to him, totals

1226 days. We disagree because Mitchell did not establish a

substantial nexus between his Washington confinement and his

Colorado charges for any days prior to January 4, 2022.

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A. Standard of Review and Applicable Law

¶ 7 Whether a sentencing court properly denied PSCC is a legal

question that we review de novo. Russell v. People, 2020 CO 37,

¶ 18.

¶ 8 “A person who is confined for an offense prior to the

imposition of sentence for said offense is entitled to credit against

the term of his or her sentence for the entire period of such

confinement.” § 18-1.3-405, C.R.S. 2023. It is the sentencing

court’s role to determine whether, and how much, PSCC a

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The People maintain that Mitchell is entitled to presentence

confinement credit (PSCC) only from January 5, 2023 — the date

the prosecution lodged a detainer — onward. But they did not

cross-appeal or ask us to alter the PSCC award, so we decline to

address whether Mitchell is entitled to PSCC between January 4,

2022, and January 5, 2023.]

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defendant should receive and to enter that amount on the mittimus.

People v. Henry, 2013 COA 104M, ¶¶ 6, 8. The court has no

discretion to deny such credit if a defendant is entitled to it. Id. at

¶ 12; see People v. Baker, 2019 CO 97M, ¶ 17. But the defendant

bears the burden of establishing entitlement to PSCC. People v.

Fransua, 2016 COA 79, ¶ 7, aff’d, 2019 CO 96; see People v. Smith,

183 P.3d 726, 732 (Colo. App. 2008) (“The defendant must show a

substantial nexus between the charge or conduct for which he or

she is to be sentenced and the period of presentence confinement

for which credit is sought.”).

¶ 9 The purpose of granting PSCC is “to insure that defendants

receive full, but not duplicative, credit for the period of presentence

confinement attributable to the charge or conduct for which they

were sentenced.” People v. Johnson, 797 P.2d 1296, 1299 (Colo.

1990). Thus, when deciding whether a defendant is entitled to

PSCC, a sentencing court must consider (1) whether there is a

substantial nexus between the charge sentenced and the

defendant’s presentence confinement, and if so, (2) whether any

portion of the PSCC award would be duplicative. See Russell,

¶¶ 24-26. “[A] substantial nexus exists where the defendant would

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have remained confined on the charge or conduct for which credit is

sought in the absence of any other charge.” Id. at ¶ 24. As relevant

here, when a defendant’s confinement in one jurisdiction is caused

by charges in multiple jurisdictions, he is entitled to nonduplicative

PSCC. Id. at ¶ 25.

B. Analysis

¶ 10 Mitchell’s claim of a substantial nexus between his pre-

January 4, 2022, confinement and his Colorado charges relies

primarily on an allegation that Douglas County entered an

extraditable no-bond-hold arrest warrant into a nationwide system

on November 18, 2019 — a warrant that Mitchell alleges would

cause him to remain in custody, even in the absence of Washington

charges. See id. at ¶ 16 (“[R]egarding whether a substantial nexus

exists, causation, not geography, is the defining question.”). In

support of this allegation, Mitchell asserts that “he was told . . . that

should Washington release him on their case, he could not have

walked out of their custody since there was this active Douglas

County warrant,” and he points to four documents in the record:

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• a Douglas County District Court order dated November

15, 2019, stating “[a] warrant is to issue and bond is set

at $25,000 cash or surety”;

• a document dated July 1, 2022, showing Mitchell’s name,

photograph, description, and Douglas County case

number, and stating “nationwide extradition . . . if

arrested outside of Colorado request no bond hold”;

• a March 4, 2022, WDOC “notification of the receipt of”

Mitchell, to the warrant division of Douglas County,

directing the county to forward a certified copy of its

warrant “if it would like this filed as a detainer”; and

• an email from the Douglas County chief deputy district

attorney replying, “We do not intend to place a detainer

on Mr. Mitchell at this point.”

¶ 11 The latter two documents suggest that in March 2022,

Douglas County had not yet requested detainment of Mitchell on

his Colorado charges. And even assuming that a nationwide

extradition warrant requesting a no-bond hold would itself, without

a detainer, cause Mitchell to be confined absent Washington

charges, Mitchell has not demonstrated that such a warrant existed

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before July 2022. See Fransua, ¶ 7. Mitchell’s bare assertion that

someone in Washington told him, at some point, that he wouldn’t

be released even in the absence of Washington charges is

unavailing. And the document that purportedly shows a nationwide

extradition warrant was issued on July 1, 2022. Mitchell does not

explain, and we do not perceive, how this document could be

interpreted to apply to an earlier time period.

¶ 12 To the extent Mitchell asserts that the Douglas County

$25,000 bond arrest warrant is sufficient to create a substantial

nexus with his confinement in Washington — in other words, to

cause him to be confined in Washington absent local charges — we

disagree. Divisions of this court have held that without an

extradition warrant from Colorado, an alleged or convicted

offender’s confinement in a foreign jurisdiction on foreign charges is

not caused by charges in Colorado. See People v. Bray, 819 P.2d

528, 529-30 (Colo. App. 1981) (the convicted offender, who

absconded from Colorado before sentencing, was not entitled to

PSCC for time spent in a British jail on British charges prior to

actual service of an extradition warrant); see also People v. Finley,

141 P.3d 911, 916 (Colo. App. 2006) (the defendant was not entitled

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to PSCC for confinement in Georgia when he was neither arrested

on a Colorado warrant nor held in Georgia on Colorado charges); cf.

People v. Hardman, 653 P.2d 763, 764 (Colo. App. 1982) (the

defendant, who was arrested in Ohio on a Colorado extradition

warrant, was entitled to PSCC for confinement in Ohio); People v.

Allen, 2024 COA 43M, ¶ 13 (“the only thing” holding the defendant

in custody for purposes of a preliminary hearing was a Louisiana

prison sentence — not a Colorado charge for which he had not been

arrested). We decline to depart from these decisions.

¶ 13 We are not persuaded otherwise by the Washington statutes

cited for the first time in Mitchell’s reply brief. Although under

Washington law, law enforcement may lawfully and constitutionally

arrest an alleged out-of-state felony offender based on an out-of-

state warrant, that is not what happened here. See Case v. Kitsap

Cnty. Sheriff’s Dep’t, 249 F.3d 921, 925-28 (9th Cir. 2001)

(Washington arrest based on Oregon warrant was permissible under

Wash. Rev. Code § 10.88.330 (2023); within two hours of arrest,

Oregon confirmed it would extradite the defendant); see also Wash.

Rev. Code § 10.88.320 (2023). The record contradicts Mitchell’s

allegation that the Douglas County arrest warrant was issued

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before his arrest in Washington — that warrant was not the cause

of his arrest. And the two additional Washington statutes cited are

inapplicable because Mitchell was confined based on his

Washington sentence, and Colorado did not seek a detainer or

demand extradition before the confinement portion of Mitchell’s

Washington sentence had been served. See Wash. Rev. Code

§§ 10.88.360, .380 (2023).

¶ 14 For these reasons, we cannot conclude that Mitchell met his

burden to establish that his pre-January 4, 2022, confinement in

Washington was caused by his Colorado charges. See Fransua, ¶ 7;

see also Smith, 183 P.3d at 732. We therefore conclude that there

is no substantial nexus between Mitchell’s Colorado charges and

the additional 665 days for which he seeks PSCC. We need not

consider whether any such credit would be duplicative.

III. Disposition

¶ 15 The sentencing court’s order as to the amount of PSSC, as

noted in the mittimus, is affirmed.

CHIEF JUDGE ROMÁN and JUDGE BERGER concur.