What a crime of violence designation really costs

Clients arrive focused on the charge. Second degree assault sounds worse than third degree assault, and it is. But in a felony case the number that decides your life is often not the class of the count at all. It is whether the count is pleaded as a crime of violence under C.R.S. 18-1.3-406.

What the designation does

A per se crime of violence converts a sentence that a judge could otherwise structure into a mandatory prison term in the aggravated range. The court's discretion largely disappears. Probation stops being available. Where there are multiple victims, sentences run consecutively rather than concurrently.

So two clients can be convicted of the same class of felony, with similar histories and similar facts, and receive outcomes that are not remotely comparable. The difference is whether the prosecution charged and proved the designation.

Where it attaches

The statute reaches crimes against a person committed with a deadly weapon, or where serious bodily injury resulted. Many second degree assault counts qualify. So do a range of other offenses, and the definition of deadly weapon in Colorado is broader than most people expect: it includes objects not designed as weapons but used in a manner capable of causing serious injury.

Colorado also layers two related concepts on top. Extraordinary risk crimes under C.R.S. 18-1.3-401(10) raise the top of the presumptive range. Mandatory aggravation under subsection (8) raises the floor to the midpoint where the offense was committed on bond, on parole or on felony probation. These stack.

How it gets removed

Not by asking nicely, and not late. The designation comes off in one of three ways, and all of them are early work.

• By attacking the injury grading. Serious bodily injury has a statutory definition involving substantial risk of death, permanent disfigurement or protracted loss of function. Medical records frequently do not support it, and an independent review says so in writing.
• By attacking the weapon element. Whether an object was used in a manner capable of causing death or serious injury is a fact question that video often answers.
• By negotiating a plea to a count that does not carry the designation, which requires giving the prosecution a defensible reason to accept it before positions harden.

Self defense is a defense, not a discount

Colorado treats self defense as an affirmative defense. Once it is properly raised on the evidence, the prosecution must disprove it beyond a reasonable doubt. That is a heavy burden and it is not a mitigating argument to be made at sentencing.

The evidence that raises it is almost always video and independent witnesses, and both have short lives. Bar cameras overwrite on a cycle measured in days or weeks. Bystanders forget and move. The preservation letter that goes out in week one is what makes the defense available in month nine.

The practical point

If you are reading a charging document and you see a crime of violence count, that is the thing to ask your lawyer about first. Not the maximum, not the class, not whether it sounds bad. Ask what the plan is to remove the designation, and ask what has already been preserved.

Reviewed September 2026. Statutes and figures mentioned here change; confirm the current text before relying on any of it. This is general information, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.