Background
G.L., a juvenile, faced charges in two separate Denver Juvenile Court cases. In Case No. 23JD571, he was charged with third degree motor vehicle theft. In Case No. 24JD402, he was charged with third degree motor vehicle theft and second degree trespass to a motor vehicle involving a different victim — a property manager at West Nevada Townhomes. Under a global plea agreement, the prosecution dismissed the charges in Case No. 24JD402, and G.L. pleaded guilty under a deferred adjudication to motor vehicle theft in Case No. 23JD571. The agreement expressly reserved restitution “for all original counts” in both cases.
The property manager testified that while inspecting a unit with a broken window, he set his keyring — containing his car key fob and the property’s master keys — near the window. He observed G.L. in the unit that evening. The next morning, both his keys and his car were missing. He later recovered his car and key fob from an impound lot, but the master keys were never returned. Because the master keys provided access to all forty units, garages, and sprinkler rooms on the property, his employer required him to pay for re-keying the entire property, garnishing his paychecks $200 per week for two months. The property manager ultimately lost his job in part due to the incident.
At the restitution hearing, the district court found that the prosecution proved causation by a preponderance of the evidence and ordered G.L. to pay $2,400 — the cost of re-keying the forty units, excluding a separate labor charge the court found unproven. G.L. appealed, arguing that (1) causation had not been established and (2) restitution for the master-key losses was legally impermissible because theft of the master keys was not an element of the charged offenses.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals affirmed the restitution order in full. On the causation question, the court reviewed the sufficiency of the evidence de novo and concluded that the circumstantial and direct evidence — the property manager’s testimony placing G.L. at the unit where the keys were left, the subsequent disappearance of both the keys and car, and the victim impact statement identifying G.L. as the person who “stole the keys” — was sufficient for a reasonable fact-finder to find by a preponderance of the evidence that G.L. took the keys and caused the resulting losses. The court noted that the plea agreement’s restitution reservation did not itself establish causation, but it did allow the court to consider losses tied to the dismissed charges so long as the prosecution separately proved proximate cause at the hearing.
On the legal scope of compensable losses, the court rejected G.L.’s argument that restitution was limited to losses directly tied to the elements of the charged offenses. Citing the Colorado restitution statute’s mandate of liberal construction and prior appellate decisions, the court held that restitution must be tied to the defendant’s unlawful conduct, not to specific elements of the crime. Because taking the keyring — including both the car key fob and the master keys — was a necessary step in stealing the vehicle, that act set in motion the natural and probable sequence of events that led to the need to re-key the property. The court found no intervening event broke the causal chain, and the re-keying costs were therefore a proximately caused, compensable loss.
Key Takeaways
- A plea agreement reserving restitution for dismissed charges preserves the prosecution’s ability to seek those losses but does not relieve the prosecution of its burden to prove proximate causation at the restitution hearing.
- Colorado courts apply a sufficiency-of-the-evidence standard when reviewing causation challenges in the restitution context, viewing all direct and circumstantial evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution.
- Restitution is not limited to losses that correspond to elements of the charged offense; it extends to all pecuniary losses proximately caused by the defendant’s unlawful conduct, including collateral consequences that flow in a natural and probable sequence from that conduct.
- A victim impact statement, even standing alone, can be sufficient evidence to support a restitution order under Colorado law, as the rules of evidence do not apply at sentencing.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces Colorado’s broad approach to juvenile restitution, confirming that the scope of compensable losses is defined by the defendant’s conduct — not by the four corners of the charging document. Defense counsel in delinquency cases must be aware that a plea agreement reserving restitution for dismissed counts opens the door to losses well beyond the technical elements of any single charge, and that circumstantial evidence presented through victim impact statements may be sufficient to satisfy the prosecution’s causation burden.
For prosecutors, the case validates the strategy of incorporating broad restitution language into global plea agreements and presenting victim impact statements as primary evidence of both loss and causation. Courts may rely on those statements even where witness testimony on cross-examination reveals uncertainty about specific facts, so long as the totality of the evidence supports causation by a preponderance.