23CA1137 Peo v Hall 07-18-2024
COLORADO COURT OF APPEALS
Court of Appeals No. 23CA1137
Mesa County District Court No. 15CR351
Honorable Gretchen B. Larson, Judge
The People of the State of Colorado,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
Clinton Rafael Hall,
Defendant-Appellant.
ORDER AFFIRMED
Division VI
Opinion by JUDGE FREYRE
Lipinsky and Schutz, JJ., concur
NOT PUBLISHED PURSUANT TO C.A.R. 35(e)
Announced July 18, 2024
Philip J. Weiser, Attorney General, Brenna A. Brackett, Assistant Attorney
General, Denver, Colorado, for Plaintiff-Appellee
Clinton Rafael Hall, Pro Se
1
¶ 1 Defendant, Clinton Rafael Hall, appeals the district court’s
May 16, 2023, order denying his most recent Crim. P. 35(c) motion
without a hearing. We affirm.
I. Background
¶ 2 Hall pleaded guilty to two counts of class 3 felony sexual
assault on a child by one in a position of trust, in exchange for the
dismissal of some thirty additional charges and stipulated,
indeterminate sentences in the custody of the Department of
Corrections. The district court accepted the plea and sentenced
Hall on October 6, 2015. Although the written Request to Plead
Guilty (Rule 11 advisement) indicated that Hall’s crimes carried
mandatory parole terms of five years, the district court advised him
that the crimes carried indeterminate parole periods of twenty years
to life, which the court then imposed.
¶ 3 In 2018, Hall timely filed a Crim. P. 35(c) motion; however,
after the court appointed counsel, Hall withdrew his motion
through counsel.
¶ 4 In 2020, Hall filed a pro se “Motion for Illegal Sentence
Pursuant to Crim. P. 35(a),” in which he asserted that his sentence
was illegal because the district court rejected the five-year parole
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terms specified in his request to plead guilty without advising him
that he could withdraw his plea as a result. The district court
denied the motion, concluding that Hall’s sentence was proper
because five years of parole would have been illegal under the
relevant statute. The court also concluded that, to the extent Hall
was claiming he had not been properly advised, he was not entitled
to relief under Crim. P. 35(a) but might be entitled to relief under
Crim. P. 35(c).
¶ 5 A division of this court affirmed the order denying relief,
accepting Hall’s concession that his indeterminate parole period
was authorized by law and rejecting — as untimely — his appellate
assertion that his sentence was imposed in an illegal manner.
People v. Hall, (Colo. App. No. 20CA0978, Apr. 21, 2022) (not
published pursuant to C.A.R. 35(e)).
¶ 6 In April 2023, Hall filed another postconviction motion, this
one captioned “Motion for Illegal Sentence Pursuant Crim. P. 35(c).”
The motion was substantively identical to his 2020 Crim. P. 35(a)
motion. However, in an attachment labeled “Addendum,” Hall
asserted that “[c]ircumstances beyond [his] control . . . created the
lateness of this motion.” In particular, he asserted that his
3
postconviction counsel who withdrew his 2018 Crim. P. 35(c)
motion failed to understand his claims. And he asserted that “[t]he
ineffectiveness of all the councils [sic] and the unethical
presentation of an illegal plea agreement [a]ffected the outcome of
the proceedings.” Last, he asserted that his ignorance of the law
should excuse his late filing.
¶ 7 On May 1, 2023, the district court denied Hall’s motion on the
basis that it was successive to his previously withdrawn 2018 Crim.
P. 35(c) motion. Hall did not timely appeal the court’s May 1 ruling.
¶ 8 Instead, on May 15, Hall filed a “Motion for Postconviction
Relief Pursuant to Crim. P. 35(c),” in which he claimed that (1) his
plea counsel misadvised him about the period of parole, rendering
his guilty plea “unknowing and unwilling”; and (2) his guilty plea
was entered “under coercion and undue influence.”
¶ 9 The district court denied the May 2023 motion, again on the
basis that it was successive to the withdrawn 2018 motion.
II. Discussion
¶ 10 On appeal, Hall contends that the district court erred by
denying his May 2023 Crim. P. 35(c) motion. He does not appear to
challenge the order denying his April 2023 Crim. P. 35(c) motion,
4
nor could he, given that his notice of appeal would have been
untimely as to that order.
¶ 11 Hall claims that the district court erred by concluding that his
May 2023 Crim. P. 35(c) motion was successive to his withdrawn
2018 Crim. P. 35(c) motion. Reviewing the matter de novo, People v.
Cali, 2020 CO 20, ¶ 14, we conclude that we need not resolve this
claim because Hall’s May 2023 Crim. P. 35(c) motion was (1)
successive to his April 2023 Crim. P. 35(c) motion and (2) barred by
the limitations period set forth in section 16-5-402(1), C.R.S. 2023.
See People v. Aarness, 150 P.3d 1271, 1277 (Colo. 2006) (an
appellate court may affirm the postconviction court for any reason
supported by the record).
¶ 12 With limited exceptions not applicable here, a district court
shall deny a Crim. P. 35(c) motion where the claims asserted
therein were, or could have been, raised and resolved in a prior
postconviction proceeding. See Crim. P. 35(c)(3)(VI)-(VII). As noted,
in April 2023, Hall filed a Crim. P. 35(c) motion that the
postconviction court denied on May 1, 2023. Instead of appealing
the May 1 order denying relief, he filed another Crim. P. 35(c)
motion on May 15. The May 2023 motion was successive to the
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April 2023 motion. Accordingly, the district court did not err by
denying it.
¶ 13 In any event, both Hall’s April and May 2023 motions were
barred by the time limitation for collateral attacks upon non-class 1
felony convictions, which requires such attacks to be raised in the
first three years after the conviction becomes final. See
§ 16-5-402(1); see also § 16-5-402(1.5) (“If an appellate court can
determine on the face of the motion, files, and record in a case that
a collateral attack is outside the time limits specified in subsection
(1) of this section, the appellate court may deny relief on that basis,
regardless of whether the issue of timeliness was raised in the trial
court.”). For purposes of section 16-5-402 and postconviction
review, if there is no direct appeal, a conviction becomes final when
the district court enters judgment and sentence is imposed. People
v. Collier, 151 P.3d 668, 671 (Colo. App. 2006). Because Hall did
not pursue a direct appeal, his conviction became final on October
6, 2015, when he was sentenced. Thus, absent circumstances
amounting to justifiable excuse or excusable neglect, see
§ 16-5-402(2)(d), Hall had until October 6, 2018, to file a Crim. P.
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35(c) motion. For this reason, the two motions he filed in 2023
were nearly five years late.
¶ 14 In his May 2023 motion, Hall claimed that he “originally filed
within the time limits set forth in section 16-5-402(1),” presumably
referring to his 2018 Crim. P. 35(c) motion. But the 2018 motion
was withdrawn. And, in any event, the timely filing of a collateral
attack does not toll the limitation period for later filed
postconviction motions. See People v. Clouse, 74 P.3d 336, 339
(Colo. App. 2002); People v. Ambos, 51 P.3d 1070, 1072 (Colo. App.
2002). Hall made no allegations of justifiable excuse or excusable
neglect in his May 2023 motion.
¶ 15 Although Hall made some of these allegations in his April 2023
motion, the allegations would have been insufficient even if the
order denying that motion were properly before us.
¶ 16 A Crim. P. 35(c) motion must allege facts that, if true, would
establish justifiable excuse or excusable neglect to entitle the
moving party to a hearing on the applicability of this exception to
the section 16-5-402 time bar. People v. Hinojos, 2019 CO 60, ¶ 17;
People v. Wiedemer, 852 P.2d 424, 440 n.15 (Colo. 1993). And a
defendant claiming justifiable excuse or excusable neglect must
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account for the entire period of his delay. See Wiedemer, 852 P.2d
at 441 (explaining that, when deciding whether a defendant has
shown justifiable excuse or excusable neglect, a court should
“consider the circumstances existing throughout the entire period
from the inception of the conviction in question”).
¶ 17 Hall’s allegation in his April 2023 addendum that his 2018
postconviction counsel misunderstood the claim he wished to raise
at that time does nothing to account for the fact that Hall waited
until 2023 to file motions for Crim. P. 35(c) relief. Nor does his
claimed ignorance of the law excuse the untimeliness of his Crim. P.
(“Ignorance or misunderstanding of the law and lack of legal
assistance does not excuse the late filing of a Crim. P. 35(c)
motion.”). And his claim that “[t]he ineffectiveness of all the
councils [sic] and the unethical presentation of an illegal plea
agreement [a]ffected the outcome of the proceedings” is too bare and
conclusory to establish why he waited nearly five years from the
expiration of the filing deadline to file his 2023 motions.
III. Disposition
¶ 18 The order is affirmed.
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JUDGE LIPINSKY and JUDGE SCHUTZ concur.
