Schneider sought review of the Court of Appeals’ judgment affirming his convictions and consecutive sentences for two counts of sexual assault. The jury returned guilty verdicts on one count of sexual assault of a physically helpless victim and another count of sexual assault by causing submission of a victim by means of sufficient consequence reasonably calculated to cause submission against the victim’s will, based on evidence of a single, continuous penetration of the same victim. The trial court imposed mandatory consecutive sentences for conviction of separate crimes of violence arising out of the same incident. 

The Court of Appeals upheld the two sexual assault convictions against challenges of jeopardy and merger, on the grounds that defendant was convicted of violating two separate statutes. It also upheld the trial court’s order of consecutive sentences, on the grounds that consecutive sentences were mandated by statute unless both convictions were supported by identical evidence, which it reasoned could not be the case where the evidence required to prove each sexual assault charge was inconsistent with that required to prove the other. 

The Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of the Court of Appeals, although on slightly different grounds. Although CRS § 18-3-402 proscribes a single crime of “sexual assault,” which can be committed in either of the two ways charged in this case, the evidence at trial was sufficient to support a jury finding that defendant committed that single crime of “sexual assault” twice against the same victim.