Background
One evening, Alfredo Manuel Gonzalez went to a bar where he encountered John Kilgore and Coreen Penniman, a woman he had previously dated. After Gonzalez made unwanted comments about Penniman, he and Kilgore got into a physical altercation in the men’s bathroom. Bar staff and patrons removed both men to the parking lot. Security footage showed Kilgore striking Gonzalez with an object, knocking him to the ground. After getting up, Gonzalez retrieved a firearm from his Jeep, returned toward Kilgore, fired six shots into the air, and then fired a seventh shot in Kilgore’s direction.
The People charged Gonzalez with attempted first degree murder (with a crime of violence sentence enhancer), felony menacing, third degree assault, prohibited use of a weapon, and two counts of disorderly conduct. At trial, Gonzalez argued self-defense. The jury acquitted him of the attempted murder charges but convicted him on all remaining counts. The Douglas County District Court sentenced him to two years in the Department of Corrections on the felony menacing conviction, to run concurrently with a controlling 364-day jail sentence on the other convictions — including six months on the disorderly conduct (fighting in public) count.
Gonzalez appealed on two grounds: (1) that the district court erred by refusing to provide the jury with the full statutory definition of “deadly weapon,” which he argued was relevant to his self-defense claim; and (2) that the six-month sentence for disorderly conduct (fighting in public) exceeded the statutory maximum for a petty offense.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions in all respects, holding that the district court did not abuse its discretion in limiting the “deadly weapon” jury instruction to the firearm portion of the statutory definition. Because the special interrogatory on the crime of violence sentence enhancer asked only whether Gonzalez used a deadly weapon — specifically a firearm — the broader statutory definition encompassing knives, bludgeons, and other instruments was legally irrelevant to any question the jury was required to decide. The court emphasized that whether Kilgore’s object qualified as a “deadly weapon” under the statute had no independent legal significance to the self-defense analysis; defense counsel remained free to argue, and did argue, that Kilgore’s conduct made Gonzalez’s response reasonable.
The court declined to follow the broad reading of People v. Toler, 981 P.2d 1096 (Colo. App. 1998), which could be read to require a deadly-weapon instruction tied to the victim’s conduct in self-defense cases, and distinguished the New Hampshire case State v. Gingras, 34 A.3d 659 (N.H. 2011), on the ground that the omitted statutory language there was directly relevant to the defendant’s own charged conduct, not the victim’s.
On sentencing, the court reversed the six-month jail term for disorderly conduct (fighting in public). The People conceded the error: under section 18-1.3-503(1.5), C.R.S. 2025, the maximum sentence for a petty offense is ten days. The court remanded with directions to correct the mittimus accordingly.
Key Takeaways
- A trial court may limit a statutory definition in jury instructions to the portion actually relevant to the legal questions the jury must decide; including legally irrelevant portions of a definition is neither necessary nor desirable.
- Whether a victim possessed a “deadly weapon” as defined by Colorado’s crime of violence statute has no independent legal significance to a self-defense claim — the defendant’s factual argument about the victim’s conduct may still be made to the jury without a formal legal instruction on the point.
- A sentence for disorderly conduct (fighting in public) as a petty offense cannot exceed ten days under section 18-1.3-503(1.5), C.R.S. 2025; a six-month sentence on that count is illegal and requires correction of the mittimus on remand.
- Divisions of the Colorado Court of Appeals are not bound by decisions of other divisions and may decline to follow prior divisional authority they find unpersuasive.
Why It Matters
This decision clarifies the boundaries of a defendant’s right to jury instructions on statutory definitions in the self-defense context. Colorado trial courts need not — and should not — instruct juries on portions of a statutory definition that bear no legal relevance to the charges or defenses at issue, even when a defendant argues the broader definition is relevant to the jury’s factual assessment of reasonableness. The ruling draws a meaningful line between factual arguments counsel may make in closing and formal legal instructions the court must provide.
The sentencing correction, though procedurally minor, serves as a reminder that petty offense sentences carry strict statutory caps in Colorado. Where the prosecution concedes an illegal sentence, appellate correction through mittimus amendment is straightforward — but the error underscores the importance of matching sentences to the correct offense classification at the time of judgment.