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March 19, 2026 Get Citation Alerts Download PDF Add Note

Peo v. Schreiner

Colorado Court of Appeals

• Citations: None known
• Docket Number: 23CA1495

• Precedential Status: Non-Precedential

• Opinion

• Authorities (2)

• Cited By (0)

• Summaries (0)

• Similar Cases (2K)

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Combined Opinion

23CA1495 Peo v Schreiner 03-19-2026

COLORADO COURT OF APPEALS

Court of Appeals No. 23CA1495
Boulder County District Court No. 21CR1698
Honorable Patrick Butler, Judge

The People of the State of Colorado,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

Devan Rebecca Schreiner,

Defendant-Appellant.

ORDER VACATED AND CASE
REMANDED WITH DIRECTIONS

Division VII
Opinion by JUDGE PAWAR
Johnson and Gomez, JJ., concur

NOT PUBLISHED PURSUANT TO C.A.R. 35(e)
Announced March 19, 2026

Philip J. Weiser, Attorney General, Joshua J. Luna, Assistant Attorney General,
Denver, Colorado, for Plaintiff-Appellee

Megan A. Ring, Colorado State Public Defender, Stephen Arvin, Deputy State
Public Defender, Denver, Colorado, for Defendant-Appellant
¶1 Defendant, Devan Rebecca Schreiner, appeals the district

court’s order imposing restitution. We conclude that the order

must be vacated and the case must be remanded for the court to

enter an order reflecting that Schreiner owes no restitution.

I. Background

¶2 On March 7, 2023, a jury convicted Schreiner of first degree

murder. The court proceeded to immediate sentencing and imposed

a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

¶3 On March 24, 2023, the prosecution filed a “Motion for

Reservation of Restitution and Court to Make a Finding and Order

of Restitut[io]n.” The prosecutor noted that Schreiner’s sentence

was not final because restitution had not been mentioned by either

party or the court at sentencing and the court had not made a

finding or order regarding restitution. He represented that the

Crime Victim Compensation Board (CVCB) had incurred a

pecuniary loss for funeral expenses and asked the court to correct

the mittimus to reflect a restitution award to the CVCB. The motion

did not indicate a requested amount of restitution.

¶4 On March 27, 2023, the district court issued an order granting

the motion, stating, “The Court finds good cause for determining

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the restitution longer than 91 days after sentencing. Any motion

for restitution shall be filed within 91 days of this Order. Any

objection shall be filed within 14 days of any Motion.” That day, the

prosecution submitted a request for the court to order Schreiner to

pay restitution in the amount of $8,806.31 to the CVCB. The

prosecution did not specify what losses supported this requested

amount.

¶5 On March 29, 2023, Schreiner filed an objection to the

restitution request, arguing that the prosecution had not

established the amount of the requested losses or that she was

liable for the losses. The court ordered the parties to schedule a

hearing on restitution and found that good cause existed to set the

hearing more than ninety-one days after sentencing.

¶6 On July 13, 2023 — 128 days after sentencing — the court

held a restitution hearing. The prosecution amended its requested

restitution amount to $7,806.31 and stated that the amount was

based on $1,020 in mental health counseling costs and $6,781.31

for funeral and burial expenses. Defense counsel argued that the

prosecution failed to present sufficient documentation to justify the

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restitution request. The court rejected counsel’s argument and

ordered Schreiner to pay $7,806.31 in restitution.

II. Analysis

¶7 On appeal, Schreiner contends that the restitution order must

be vacated because the district court failed to comply with its

statutory obligation to enter a restitution order at sentencing. We

agree.

¶8 Every order of conviction must include one of the four types of

orders set forth in the restitution statute. People v. Weeks, 2021

CO 75, ¶ 3. At the time Schreiner was sentenced, section 18-1.3-

603(1), C.R.S. 2023, required that every order of felony conviction

include one of the following orders:

(a) An order of a specific amount of restitution
be paid by the defendant;

(b) An order that the defendant is obligated to
pay restitution, but that the specific amount of
restitution shall be determined within the
ninety-one days immediately following the
order of conviction, unless good cause is
shown for extending the time period by which
the restitution amount shall be determined;

(c) An order, in addition to or in place of a
specific amount of restitution, that the
defendant pay restitution covering the actual

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costs of specific future treatment of any victim
of the crime; or

(d) [An order containing] a specific finding that
no victim of the crime suffered a pecuniary
loss and therefore no order for the payment of
restitution is being entered.

“[A] sentence that fails to include one or more of the four

enumerated restitution orders in subsection (1) is a sentence not

authorized by law (i.e., an illegal sentence) that may be corrected at

any time.” Snow v. People, 2025 CO 32, ¶ 21.

¶9 In Snow, the sentencing court deferred the issue of restitution

in its entirety for sixty days and then entered a restitution order

108 days after sentencing. Id. at ¶¶ 2, 7-8. The supreme court

concluded that, because deferring restitution in its entirety is not

one of the restitution orders authorized by section 18-1.3-603(1),

the defendant’s sentence was not authorized by law. Snow, ¶¶ 2,

22-23, 27. And, as a remedy, the supreme court determined that

the restitution order must be vacated and the case must be

returned to the district court with instructions to enter an order

pursuant to section 18-1.3-603(1)(d) that the defendant owes no

restitution. Snow, ¶¶ 3-5, 30-38.

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¶ 10 The Attorney General argues that Snow is distinguishable

from this case because (1) the district court’s March 27 order was a

subsection (1)(b) order that corrected the illegality caused by the

court’s failure to address restitution at sentencing; and (2) the

March 27 order was timely filed within ninety-one days of

sentencing as permitted by subsection (1)(b).

¶ 11 Initially, we are not convinced that the March 27 order can be

read as constituting a subsection (1)(b) order. The order made no

mention of Schreiner’s liability for restitution and instructed the

prosecution to file “[a]ny motion for restitution.” Thus, the March

27 order is more akin to an order deferring restitution in its

entirety.

¶ 12 Nevertheless, even if the March 27 order could be considered a

subsection (1)(b) order, we reject the Attorney General’s assertion

that the entry of that order within ninety-one days of sentencing

cured the court’s failure to enter a restitution order authorized by

subsection (1) at sentencing. See id. at ¶ 27 (“[T]he subsection

(1)(b) deadline is inapposite here because the district court never

entered a subsection (1)(b) order. Rather, at sentencing, the court

5
merely reserved the issue of restitution in its entirety, an order not

authorized by subsection (1).”).

¶ 13 Subsection (1)(b) creates two separate, final, appealable

orders: a preliminary sentencing order assigning liability for

restitution but reserving the court’s determination of the amount,

and a subsequent order setting the amount of restitution for which

a defendant is liable. Tennyson v. People, 2025 CO 31, ¶¶ 41-43;

Weeks, ¶¶ 4, 30; Sanoff v. People, 187 P.3d 576, 578-79 (Colo.

2008). The former order is a component of a defendant’s sentence;

the latter is not. Tennyson, ¶¶ 6-7, 39-43; Sanoff, 187 P.3d at 578 -

79.

¶ 14 Subsection (1)(b)’s ninety-one-day time period applies to the

order determining the restitution amount. Weeks, ¶¶ 4-5, 39. The

Attorney General has not presented, nor have we found, any

authority that would support a conclusion that the preliminary

order assigning restitution liability can also be entered within that

ninety-one-day timeframe. See Snow, ¶¶ 27-29 (concluding that

subsection (1)(b) did not authorize the post-sentencing imposition of

restitution because “the record of the district court proceedings is

barren of an explicit or implicit finding of restitution liability either

6
before or during the sentencing hearing” that would provide a “basis

for [the supreme court] to infer that the only issue the district court

deferred until after the sentencing hearing was the determination of

the amount of restitution” (emphasis added)); cf. id. at ¶ 33

(“Allowing trial courts to correct their failure to adhere to

[subsection (1)’s] requirement [that, at sentencing, the court must

enter one or more of the four enumerated restitution orders] by

simply entering a subsection (1)(a) order at any time would make

the requirement pointless.”).

¶ 15 To the contrary, “subsection (1)(b) . . . orders must enter

before or during the sentencing hearing.” Id. at ¶ 34 n.11. And the

entry of such order after sentencing would be untimely. Cf. id. at ¶

34 (“[O]rders under subsection (1)(a) must enter at or before the

sentencing hearing”; thus, “subsection (1)(a) orders entered after the

sentencing hearing are necessarily untimely.”).

¶ 16 Consistent with Snow, the district court’s failure to enter an

order authorized by subsection (1) at sentencing must be remedied

by vacating the untimely July 13 restitution order and remanding

the case for entry of a subsection (1)(d) order that Schreiner owes

no restitution. See id. at ¶ 38 n.12 (recognizing that a subsection

7
(1)(d) order would also be untimely but holding that “courts must

have a way to correct an illegal sentence like the one imposed on

[the defendant]” and “a subsection (1)(d) order is the only restitution

order in the statutory list that does that without violating our

General Assembly’s intent in revising our restitution paradigm”).

¶ 17 Because we are vacating the restitution order on the above

ground, we need not address Schreiner’s other claim that the order

should be vacated because the prosecution failed to comply with its

obligations under section 18-1.3-603(2)(a).

III. Disposition

¶ 18 The restitution order is vacated, and the case is remanded for

correction of the mittimus to reflect that Schreiner owes no

restitution.

JUDGE JOHNSON and JUDGE GOMEZ concur.

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