Peo v. Selders

── Peo v. Selders ── Court: Colorado Court of Appeals Date: May 07, 2026 Category: General 23CA0482 Peo v Selders 05-07-2026 COLORADO COURT OF APPEALS Court of Appeals No. 23CA0482 Mesa County District Court No. 14CR743 Honorable Valerie J. Robison, Judge The People of the State of Colorado, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Kyle Dean Selders, Defendant-Appellant. ORDERS AFFIRMED Division I Opinion by JUDGE J. JONES Lum and Meirink, JJ., concur NOT PUBLISHED PURSUANT TO C.A.R. 35(e) Announced May 7, 2026 Philip J. Weiser, Attorney General, Katharine J. Gillespie, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Denver, Colorado, for Plaintiff-Appellee Megan A. Ring, Colorado State Public Defender, Julieanne Frachione, Deputy State Public Defender, Denver, Colorado, for Defendant-Appellant ¶1 Defendant, Kyle Dean Selders, appeals the postconviction court’s order granting the prosecution’s Crim. P. 35(a) motion to correct an illegal sentence and its order imposing a legal sentence. He contends that the correction of his illegal sentence violated his constitutional right to due process or, alternatively, that the prosecution’s request to correct the illegal sentence is barred by the doctrine of laches. We affirm. I. Background ¶2 In 2015, Selders pleaded guilty to an added count of class 3 felony sexual assault on a child by one in a position of trust (victim less than fifteen years of age). In exchange, the prosecution agreed to dismiss the original charges. The district court sentenced Selders to ten years on sex offender intensive supervision probation (SOISP), with two years in community corrections and ninety days in jail. ¶3 Thereafter, Selders was successfully discharged from community corrections and sex offense specific treatment, and his probation officer periodically sought to modify his probation conditions to be less restrictive. At some point, the officer 1  requested, and the court granted, the modification of his probation from SOISP supervision to non-SOISP supervision. ¶4 In 2022, while Selders was still on probation, the prosecution filed the underlying Crim. P. 35(a) motion, arguing that the determinate ten-year SOISP sentence was illegal and that the applicable statute required the imposition of an indeterminate twenty-year-to-life SOISP sentence for a class 3 felony sex offense. Selders conceded that his original sentence was illegal but argued that the court should not correct it because the prosecution’s request was barred by the doctrine of laches and a sentence correction would violate his due process right to an expectation of finality in the original sentence. ¶5 The postconviction court granted the motion, finding that the original ten-year SOISP sentence wasn’t authorized by law, that it must be corrected, and that an illegal sentence can be corrected at any time. The court then imposed the required indeterminate twenty-year-to-life SOISP sentence for Selders’s sexual assault on a child by one in a position of trust conviction. 2  II. Legal Authority and Standard of Review ¶6 It is the General Assembly’s prerogative to prescribe punishments. Snedeker v. People, 2025 CO 10, ¶ 10. “A court may not impose a sentence that is inconsistent with the terms specified by statutes.” People v. Dist. Ct., 673 P.2d 991, 995 (Colo. 1983). “A sentence which is beyond the statutory authority of the court is illegal.” Id.; see also Tennyson v. People, 2025 CO 31, ¶ 25 (“[A]n illegal sentence includes a sentence that is not authorized by law because it fails to comply in full with statutory requirements.”). An illegal sentence is void, which means it is as if it never existed. Snedeker, ¶ 16. ¶7 A court has an affirmative duty to correct