Background
Delano Marco Medina appealed the district court’s order denying his postconviction motion without a hearing. The case arose from an August 2013 incident in which Medina’s wife called 911 and reported that he had held a knife to her throat and threatened her. Medina was charged in Lake County with menacing committed with the use of a real or simulated weapon, a class 5 felony.
As part of a global plea disposition resolving the Lake County case and another case in Boulder County, Medina pleaded guilty as charged in Lake County. He stipulated to a one-year sentence in the custody of the Department of Corrections, to run consecutively to a two-year Department of Corrections sentence in the Boulder County case. The district court imposed the stipulated one-year sentence in 2015.
Medina previously filed a Crim. P. 35(c) motion, which the postconviction court denied after an evidentiary hearing. A division of the Colorado Court of Appeals affirmed, and the Colorado Supreme Court affirmed the division’s opinion on different grounds. People v. Medina, 2021 COA 124, aff’d on other grounds, 2023 CO 46. In 2025, Medina filed the motion at issue here, claiming that his sentence was illegal under sections 18-1.3-401(8)(a)(III) and (9)(a), C.R.S. 2026, and that his plea was invalid because he was materially induced to plead guilty by the offer of an illegal sentence. The district court summarily denied the motion.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals affirmed. It reviewed the denial of Medina’s postconviction motion de novo, citing Yeadon v. People, 2020 CO 38, ¶ 6, for de novo review of sentence legality, and noted that it could affirm on any ground supported by the record, citing People v. Cooper, 2023 COA 113, ¶ 7.
The court assumed, without deciding, that Medina’s illegal-sentence claim was cognizable under Crim. P. 35(a). It then rejected the claim on the merits. Section 18-1.3-401(8)(a)(III) did not apply because Medina was neither on probation nor awaiting sentencing following revocation of probation when he committed felony menacing; the court also noted that Medina conceded in his reply brief that he had cited the wrong subsection. Although both parties agreed that section 18-1.3-401(9)(a) applied, that provision required only a sentence of at least the minimum of the presumptive range. For a class 5 felony, that minimum was one year, so Medina’s one-year sentence was not illegal.
Medina’s related plea challenge failed because the promised sentence was not illegal. Independently, the court stated that a postconviction claim challenging the validity of a guilty plea is cognizable under Crim. P. 35(c), and therefore Medina’s claim was successive and time barred under Crim. P. 35(c)(3)(I) and (VII). The court noted that Medina appeared to concede this point in his reply brief.
Key Takeaways
- The court assumed cognizability of the illegal-sentence claim under Crim. P. 35(a) but did not decide that threshold issue.
- Section 18-1.3-401(9)(a) required at least the presumptive-range minimum, and Medina’s one-year sentence satisfied that requirement.
- The plea challenge failed both because the promised sentence was lawful and, independently, because it was a successive and time-barred Crim. P. 35(c) claim.
Why It Matters
The opinion distinguishes the statutory prerequisites for consecutive-sentencing provisions from the actual sentencing floor they impose. It also illustrates how a plea-validity claim tied to an allegedly illegal sentence can fail on the merits while separately being barred as a successive, untimely Crim. P. 35(c) claim.
The order was affirmed. The opinion was announced November 5, 2026, and was not published pursuant to C.A.R. 35(e).