Peo v. Vreeland

── Peo v. Vreeland ── Court: Colorado Court of Appeals Date: May 28, 2026 Category: General 25CA1319 Peo v Vreeland 05-28-2026 COLORADO COURT OF APPEALS Court of Appeals No. 25CA1319 Douglas County District Court No. 04CR706 Honorable Victoria Klingensmith, Judge The People of the State of Colorado, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Delmart Edward Vreeland, Defendant-Appellant. ORDER VACATED Division I Opinion by JUDGE J. JONES Fox and Dunn, JJ., concur NOT PUBLISHED PURSUANT TO C.A.R. 35(e) Announced May 28, 2026 Philip J. Weiser, Attorney General, Patrick A. Withers, Assistant Solicitor General and Senior Assistant Attorney General, Denver, Colorado, for Plaintiff- Appellee Brownstone P.A., George Thomas, Winter Park, Florida, for Defendant- Appellant ¶1 Defendant, Delmart Edward Vreeland, appeals the postconviction court’s order correcting his sentence under Crim. P. 36. We vacate the order’s changes to his sentence. I. Background ¶2 In 2004, Vreeland told two teenage boys that he would pay them if they would let him photograph them in their underwear. He gave the two teens alcohol and cocaine, took photographs of them, and sexually assaulted them. ¶3 In 2006, a jury found Vreeland guilty of two counts of inducement of child prostitution, two counts of soliciting for child prostitution, four counts of sexual exploitation of children, two counts of sexual assault, two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and one count of distribution of a controlled substance. In 2008, the court sentenced Vreeland to more than 300 years in prison. A division of this court affirmed the judgment of conviction on direct appeal. People v. Vreeland, (Colo. App. No. 08CA2468, Feb. 14, 2013) (not published pursuant to C.A.R. 35(f)) (Vreeland I). ¶4 Vreeland filed a postconviction petition in 2017. The postconviction court denied his petition without a hearing. A 1  division of this court affirmed. People v. Vreeland, (Colo. App. No. 17CA1648, Aug. 27, 2020) (not published pursuant to C.A.R. 35(e)) (Vreeland II). ¶5 In 2021, Vreeland filed a second postconviction petition. He alleged, in relevant part, that the district court had sentenced him to an illegal sentence by ordering the sentence on count eight to run concurrently with the sentence on count nine. (Both counts were for sexual exploitation of child-victim N.M.) Instead, he alleged, the court should have imposed the count eight sentence consecutively to the count nine sentence. The postconviction court denied his petition without a hearing. Vreeland appealed that order. See People v. Vreeland, (Colo. App. No. 22CA1704, Oct. 16, 2025) (not published pursuant to C.A.R. 35(e)) (Vreeland III). ¶6 In June 2025, while Vreeland III was pending, the postconviction court issued an order sua sponte correcting the mittimus, purporting to correct “[c]lerical mistakes in judgments, orders, or other parts of the record and errors in the record arising from oversight or omission[, which] may be corrected by the court at any time and after such notice, if any, as the court orders.” Crim. P. 36. Among those corrections, the court ordered Vreeland’s 2  sentence for count nine to run consecutively to his sentence for count eight. (The court also corrected a couple of statutory cites. Those corrections were clearly clerical and aren’t relevant to this appeal.) ¶7 In the current appeal, Vreeland challenges the postconviction court’s June 2025 sua sponte order. ¶8 The Vreeland III division affirmed the postconviction court’s order denying without a hearing Vreeland’s second postconviction petition and declined to disturb the original concurrent sentences on counts eight and nine. But, as relevant to this appeal, t