Rail v. Colorado
Annotate this CaseA jury found Defendant Paul Rail guilty of sexual assault on a child. In response to a special interrogatory, the jury also found, unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt, that Rail committed the offense as part of a pattern of abuse and that the State had proved each of the listed incidents of sexual contact, including “[a]ll of the alleged incidents of sexual contact” testified to by the victim. However, in response to a separate unanimity interrogatory, the jury indicated that these same incidents of sexual contact (excluding one that appeared only on the pattern of abuse interrogatory) were “[n]ot [p]roved.” Rail argued on appeal of his conviction that, under Sanchez v. Colorado, 325 P.3d 553 (2014), this inconsistency required reversal of his conviction for sexual assault on a child as part of a pattern of abuse. After its review, the Colorado Supreme Court disagreed: "Unlike in Sanchez, the jury here returned a unanimous verdict of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Moreover, any ambiguity in this verdict created by the jury’s response on the unanimity interrogatory was resolved by individual polling of the jurors, each of whom confirmed their intent to find the defendant guilty of sexual assault on a child as part of a pattern of abuse, and their express findings that the People had proved all the alleged incidents of sexual contact beyond a reasonable doubt."
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