Peo v. Valdez

• Court: Colorado Court of Appeals
• Decided: October 2, 2025
• Docket: 21CA2025
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

21CA2025 Peo v Valdez 10-02-2025

COLORADO COURT OF APPEALS

Court of Appeals No. 21CA2025 Pueblo County District Court No. 19CR2078 Honorable Deborah R. Eyler, Judge

The People of the State of Colorado,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

Bernie Anthony Valdez,

Defendant-Appellant.

JUDGMENT AFFIRMED, ORDER VACATED, AND CASE REMANDED WITH DIRECTIONS

Division II Opinion by JUDGE FOX Schutz and Moultrie, JJ., concur

Prior Opinion Announced April 25, 2024, Vacated in 24SC382

NOT PUBLISHED PURSUANT TO C.A.R. 35(e) Announced October 2, 2025

Philip J. Weiser, Attorney General, Sonia Raichur Russo, Assistant Attorney General, Denver, Colorado, for Plaintiff-Appellee

Megan A. Ring, Colorado State Public Defender, Sean James Lacefield, Deputy State Public Defender, Denver, Colorado, for Defendant-Appellant ¶1 This case is before us again after the Colorado Supreme Court

vacated our opinion in People v. Valdez, (Colo. App. No. 21CA2025,

Apr. 25, 2024) (not published pursuant to C.A.R. 35(e)) (Valdez I),

and remanded with directions for us to reconsider Valdez I in light

of Snow v. People, 2025 CO 32. People v. Valdez, (Colo. No.

24SC382, Aug. 4, 2025) (unpublished order).

¶2 In Valdez I, defendant, Bernie Anthony Valdez, challenged his

convictions for sexual assault against a child under section 18-3-

405(1), C.R.S. 2025, the district court’s application of an aggravated

sex offense sentence enhancer under section 18-1.3-1004(1)(e)(I),

C.R.S. 2025, and its restitution order; we affirmed. Valdez I, slip

op. at ¶¶ 1, 77. Because the supreme court remanded this case for

reconsideration only in light of Snow, which addresses issues

related only to restitution, we limit our reconsideration to Valdez’s

challenges to the restitution order and otherwise incorporate by

reference Valdez I.

¶3 We offered the parties the opportunity to provide supplemental

briefs. Having considered those briefs, we agree with the parties

that, pursuant to Snow, Valdez is not liable to pay any amount of

restitution. We therefore vacate Valdez’s restitution order and

1 remand for the district court to enter an order pursuant to section

18-1.3-603(1)(d), C.R.S. 2021,1 that no restitution is owed.

I. Background

¶4 At Valdez’s October 29, 2021, sentencing hearing, the district

court asked the prosecution if there was “anything else.” The

prosecutor stated, “I am going to ask the court to reserve restitution

for victim compensation.” The district court responded, “So, I’ll

reserve restitution, the District Attorney needs to file a motion

within 42 days of today’s date. The Defense will have 14 days to

object thereafter.” The hearing ended without further discussion or

objection.

¶5 The prosecution submitted its restitution motion four days

later, on November 2, 2021, and requested $2,440.14, payable to

1 When Valdez’s restitution order issued, district courts had ninety-

one days following the order of conviction to determine the specific amount of restitution. § 18-1.3-603(1)(b), C.R.S. 2021. In 2025, the General Assembly amended the deadline such that district courts must determine the specific amount of restitution within sixty-three days following the later of (1) the prosecution’s presentation of restitution information as required by section 18- 1.3-603(2)(a), C.R.S. 2025; or (2) the order of conviction. Ch. 307, sec. 1, § 18-1.3-603(1), (1)(b), 2025 Colo. Sess. Laws 1606. All citations to section 18-1.3-603 in this opinion are to the 2021 version.

2 Colorado’s Crime Victim Compensation fund, to cover the victim’s

therapy sessions (from April 2020 through November 2021).

¶6 The defense never responded to the prosecution’s motion for

restitution; thus, the trial court granted the motion on November

28, 2021, awarding restitution in the amount requested.

II. Valdez I Procedural History

¶7 In Valdez I, Valdez contended that the district court lacked

authority to order restitution pursuant to People v. Weeks, 2021 CO

75, and section 18-1.3-603 and argued the restitution order had to

be vacated. Valdez I, slip op. at ¶ 66. Valdez further argued that

the prosecution did not request a specific amount of restitution or

identify why it lacked the necessary information at the sentencing

hearing, instead only “reserving restitution” before later providing

the required information. Id. The prosecution countered that this

argument misinterpreted Weeks’s holding and section 18-1.3-603’s

requirements and argued that Valdez waived his objection to the

restitution order by failing to object contemporaneously or in

response to the motion. Valdez I, slip op. at ¶ 66.

¶8 We concluded that because the district court awarded

restitution within section 18-1.3-603(1)(b)’s deadline, it had

3 retained its authority to order restitution. Valdez I, slip op. at ¶ 76.

We therefore affirmed the restitution order without addressing the

prosecution’s contention that Valdez waived his objection. Id. at

¶ 76 & n.6. We now reconsider that conclusion with the benefit of

Snow.

III. Standard of Review and Applicable Law

¶9 “Questions of statutory interpretation are questions of law”

that we review de novo. Weeks, ¶ 24. Additionally, “district courts

have the inherent authority to manage their dockets through

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

¶ 10 Section 18-1.3-603(1) mandates that restitution be considered

in nearly every order of conviction. Orders of restitution that

obligate a defendant to pay restitution but do not specify the exact

amount when they are issued carry specific requirements. See

§ 18-1.3-603(1)(b). Such orders impose a duty on the district court

to ensure that “the specific amount of restitution shall be

determined within the ninety-one days immediately following the

order of conviction, unless good cause is shown for extending the

time period by which the restitution amount shall be determined.”

Id.; see also Weeks, ¶ 5 (“[T]he deadline in subsection (1)(b) refers to

4 the court’s determination of the restitution amount the defendant

must pay, not to the prosecution’s determination of the proposed

amount of restitution.”). However, a district court lacks authority to

order restitution beyond the ninety-one-day statutory deadline

without good cause. See Weeks, ¶ 45.

¶ 11 Section 18-1.3-603(2)2 also imposes a duty on the prosecution

to exercise reasonable diligence to “determine the amount of

restitution . . . and present [it] to the court” at or before the

sentencing hearing. If the prosecution does not meet this

requirement, however, the district court does not automatically lose

authority to enter restitution. See Weeks, ¶¶ 6-8.

¶ 12 In Snow, ¶ 22, the Colorado Supreme Court held that a

district court cannot not issue an order that simply reserves “the

issue of restitution in its entirety,” rather than just the specific

amount of restitution. Because such orders are not one the four

types of restitution orders recognized by section 18-1.3-603(1), they

constitute sentences unauthorized by law, and challenges to such

2 Because subsection (2) of section 18-1.3-603, C.R.S. 2021, was

amended after the court entered Valdez’s restitution order, this opinion also cites the 2021 version of subsection (2). See Ch. 263, sec. 3, § 18-1.3-603(2), 2022 Colo. Sess. Laws 1926-27.

5 orders are cognizable as illegal sentence claims under Crim P. 35(a).

Snow, ¶¶ 1, 20-23.

¶ 13 The court distinguished Snow from Weeks, which focused on

the ninety-one-day deadline in section 18-1.3-603(1)(b), by noting

that “the subsection (1)(b) deadline [wa]s inapposite . . . because the

district court never entered a subsection (1)(b) order. Rather, at

sentencing, the court merely reserved the issue of restitution in its

entirety, an order not authorized by subsection (1).” Snow, ¶ 27.

The supreme court noted that, unlike in Weeks, “the record of the

district court proceedings [wa]s barren of an explicit or implicit

finding of restitution liability either before or during the sentencing

hearing.” Snow, ¶¶ 28-29. The court therefore held that, as with

an untimely restitution order under subsection (1)(b), when an

order purports to reserve restitution in its entirety, “the sole remedy

consistent with the legislative intent behind [section 18-1.3-603(1)],

is vacatur of the . . . restitution order and entry of an order

pursuant to subsection (1)(d) that there is no restitution owed.”

Snow, ¶ 38.

6 IV. Valdez’s Restitution Order in Light of Snow

¶ 14 The record does not disclose why the prosecution did not have

records of the victim’s therapy costs available at or before the

sentencing hearing. The prosecution’s briefing suggests that the

therapy invoices were not sent to the district attorney’s office, but it

points to nothing in the record showing the prosecution tried to

locate this information but could not.

¶ 15 Based on the transcript from the sentencing hearing, it

appears that the prosecution here followed the “[o]ld habits” that

Weeks explicitly disapproved of, wherein the prosecution would

reserve restitution for a later date and file a motion providing the

specific amount later. Weeks, ¶¶ 1-10. And seemingly in an effort

to ensure that restitution was ordered within the ninety-one-day

limit, the district court here ordered the prosecution to file its

restitution motion within forty-two days. The prosecution

ultimately complied with that order.

¶ 16 In Snow, ¶ 28, the supreme court emphasized that while

Weeks “touched on the impropriety of reserving the issue of

restitution in its entirety at sentencing, our discussion reflected

that the trial court had invoked subsection (1)(b), which permits a

7 finding of restitution liability at sentencing and postponement of the

determination of the amount of restitution until after sentencing.”

¶ 17 The supreme court also noted that “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.” Snow, ¶ 29. Thus, the supreme court concluded there

was “no basis . . . to infer that the only issue the district court

deferred until after the sentencing hearing was the determination of

the amount of restitution.” Id.

¶ 18 The result of this dynamic is that we must carefully scrutinize

whether the district court here implicitly or explicitly (1) ordered

restitution but reserved only the amount or (2) reserved restitution

entirely. If it reserved restitution entirely, then the restitution order

cannot stand. See id. at ¶ 38.

¶ 19 Here the prosecution explicitly asked that the court “reserve

restitution,” and the court granted the request, noting that the

parties could later file motions on the subject. The court did not

explicitly or implicitly deem Valdez liable for restitution generally

8 while reserving only a determination of the specific amount of

restitution. See Tennyson v. People, 2025 CO 31, ¶¶ 3, 10 (The

“district court imposed a sentence that implicitly obligated the

defendant . . . to pay restitution and postponed the determination of

the amount of restitution until a later date” when the court “gave

the prosecution ‘[ninety] days to determine,’ not whether there

would be restitution, but rather ‘what restitution is due and

owing.’”). The prosecution’s motion for restitution stated, “At

sentencing, the defendant was ordered to pay restitution, the

amount of which [was] to be determined and submitted to the Court

within forty-two (42) days.” Thus, the prosecution apparently

believed that restitution had been ordered and that only the specific

amount of restitution remained to be determined. And the court

ordered a specific amount of restitution within section 18-1.3-

603(1)(b)’s ninety-one-day deadline.

¶ 20 In light of Snow, however, and in the absence of any record

support allowing us to conclude that the court had determined that

Valdez was liable for restitution, we cannot conclude that the court

complied with section 18-1.3-603(1)(b). See Snow, ¶¶ 27-29.

Rather, the record supports the contention that the court

9 improperly reserved both the question of whether restitution was

owed and, if so, the amount thereof. See id. at ¶¶ 22-23. The

restitution order therefore constituted an illegal sentence because it

was not one of the four types of restitution orders authorized by

section 18-1.3-603(1), and it must be vacated and replaced with an

order pursuant to section 18-1.3-603(1)(d) that Valdez owes no

restitution. See Snow, ¶¶ 22-23, 38.

V. Disposition

¶ 21 We vacate the district court’s order imposing restitution and

remand for the court to enter an order pursuant to section 18-1.3-

603(1)(d) that there is no restitution owed. We otherwise affirm

Valdez’s convictions and sentence as detailed in Valdez I.

JUDGE SCHUTZ and JUDGE MOULTRIE concur.