Supreme Court Overturns Colorado Man’s Conviction Under Habitual Offender Law

The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on Jan. 15, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The U.S. Supreme Court vacated a Colorado man’s conviction under a habitual criminal statute, directing a state appeals court to reconsider the case in light of a ruling the justices made last year.

A habitual criminal statute enhances the sentence for a person convicted of multiple crimes.

The new U.S. Supreme Court decision came after the court laid down rules in Erlinger v. United States governing how trial courts should evaluate prior convictions in habitual criminal cases.

On June 21, 2024, the high court found in Erlinger that for a conviction under the federal Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) to be consistent with the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, there must be a unanimous jury determination beyond a reasonable doubt that the previous offenses took place on separate occasions.

The Armed Career Criminal Act was enacted in 1984 in response to concerns that a small number of repeat offenders were committing a disproportionate number of crimes.

The justices granted the petition in Fields v. Colorado on Jan. 27 and vacated the conviction of petitioner Troy Fields under Colorado’s habitual criminal statute.

The high court sent the case back to the Court of Appeals of Colorado “for further consideration in light of Erlinger v. United States.”

No justices dissented. The U.S. Supreme Court did not explain the reasoning underlying its decision.

The Fields case goes back to 1994 when a woman identified in court papers as J.C. became a victim of kidnapping, sexual assault, and robbery in her home. The investigation went nowhere, but suddenly, in 2017, detectives looking into cold cases realized that DNA from the case file matched a sample from Fields. Charges were laid against Fields.

Fields was convicted by a Colorado state jury of kidnapping and sexual assault, according to a brief in opposition the state filed in December 2024. He was also convicted of five counts under the Colorado habitual criminal statute.

Fields was given concurrent—or overlapping—sentences of 96 years of imprisonment for kidnapping and life imprisonment for sexual assault.

For a conviction under the state statute, the jury was required to find that Fields had prior criminal convictions. Jurors found there were previous convictions but did not specifically determine that those convictions came out of “separate and distinct criminal episodes,” the brief said.

Fields raised this failure to make the separate-and-distinct finding with the Colorado Court of Appeals, which declined to take up the case in August 2023. Fields appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court, which rejected the appeal on May 6, 2024.

Then, weeks later, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its Erlinger decision. Months after that, Fields petitioned the nation’s highest court.

Fields argued his conviction should be overturned because the Court of Appeals of Colorado’s decision upholding it was now inconsistent with Erlinger.

“Colorado’s habitual-criminal scheme applies to someone convicted of certain prior offenses ‘arising out of separate and distinct criminal episodes,’” according to the petition filed in September 2024.

Before the Erlinger decision was issued, Fields had argued before the Court of Appeals of Colorado that the U.S. Supreme Court found in Apprendi v. New Jersey (2000) that the Constitution “required the jury to find that his prior convictions were separately brought and tried and arose out of separate and distinct criminal episodes.”

The state appeals court disagreed. That court held that Apprendi’s prior conviction exception “encompass[es] whether prior convictions were separately brought and tried and arose out of separate and distinct criminal episodes,” which made the issues in the Fields case “matters of law for the court” to decide, according to the petition.

The court upheld the trial court’s ruling that Fields was a habitual criminal, which quadrupled the maximum possible sentence. Fields appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court, which declined to accept the case.

But in Erlinger the U.S. Supreme Court “definitively rejected the Colorado court’s view,” the petition said.

Fields urged the high court to “vacate and remand this case in light of Erlinger” because “it is now clear that the Fifth and Sixth Amendments require that a unanimous jury—not a judge—determine whether Mr. Fields’s prior offenses arose out of separate and distinct criminal episodes.”

Colorado said in its brief that the habitual criminal conviction of Fields did not violate the Constitution.

The U.S. Supreme Court held in Washington v. Recuenco (2006) that “most constitutional errors” committed by courts, including those involving the Sixth Amendment, “can be harmless.”

“The alleged error in this case is no exception,” the brief said.

Fields’s prior convictions for forgery, drug-related offenses, theft, and burglary took place between 1987 and 1989 based on acts committed in two different jurisdictions.

“There is no reasonable possibility that the jury would have found his prior convictions were part of a single criminal episode,” the brief said.

Fields’s attorney, Tobias Loss-Eaton of Sidley Austin in Washington, declined to comment.

The Epoch Times reached out for comment to Colorado Deputy Attorney General Jillian Price, but no reply was received by publication time.