The People sought review of the Court of Appeals’ judgment reversing Roman’s conviction for first degree assault. The trial court instructed the jury on the lesser included offense of second degree assault committed by intentionally causing bodily injury with a deadly weapon, but it denied Roman’s request for an additional lesser-included-offense instruction on second degree assault committed by recklessly causing serious bodily injury with a deadly weapon. The Court of Appeals reversed, concluding both that the trial court erred in denying Roman’s requested additional lesser-included-offense instruction and that the error was not harmless.

The Supreme Court reversed the judgment of the Court of Appeals. In light of the evidence presented at trial and the instructions actually provided to the jury, there was no reasonable possibility that the failure to instruct on reckless second degree assault contributed to defendant’s conviction of first degree assault. Any error in that regard would therefore have been harmless.

In light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s holding in Davis v. Washington, 547 U.S. 813 (2006), the Colorado Supreme Court held that nontestimonial hearsay statements do not implicate a defendant’s state constitutional right to confrontation, overruling Compan v. People, 121 P.3d 876 (Colo. 2005), which held otherwise. Because the hearsay statements at issue in this case were nontestimonial, they did not implicate Colorado’s Confrontation Clause, and the Court of Appeals did not err in concluding that defendant’s confrontation right was not violated. The Court further held that the third requirement for the admission of inculpatory hearsay statements against interest, announced in People v. Newton, 966 P.2d 563, 576 (Colo. 1998) (requiring corroborating circumstances to demonstrate the statement’s trustworthiness), is not constitutionally required for nontestimonial statements against interest. To admit a third party’s nontestimonial statements against interest under the version of CRE 804(b)(3) that existed at the time of defendant’s 2008 trial, only two conditions needed to be satisfied: (1) the witness must have been unavailable, and (2) the statement must have tended to subject the declarant to criminal liability. The Court concluded that the third party’s nontestimonial statements against interest satisfied these two requirements, and the trial court did not abuse its discretion in admitting these statements as a statement against interest under CRE 804(b)(3), as that rule existed at the time of defendant’s trial. Finally, the Court held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in admitting testimony about defendant’s response to the death of her second child because the testimony was relevant and not unduly prejudicial; nor did the trial court plainly err in admitting testimony about the cause of the second child’s death because the brief, isolated statements did not so undermine the trial’s fairness as to cast serious doubt on the reliability of defendant’s conviction. Accordingly, the Court of Appeals’ judgment was affirmed.

The Supreme Court reviewed the Court of Appeals’ conclusion that the Montezuma County Assessor had statutory authority to retroactively assess property taxes on oil and gas leaseholds operated by Kinder Morgan, after the assessor determined that Kinder Morgan had underreported the wellhead selling price of CO₂ gas produced at the leaseholds. The Court considered whether this assessment was authorized under the statute permitting retroactive property tax assessments when, pursuant to CRS § 39-5-125(1), “taxable property has been omitted from the assessment roll.” Given Colorado’s self-reporting scheme for property taxation of oil and gas leaseholds and the legislature’s amendments to that scheme—which describe the “underreporting of the selling price or the quantity of oil and gas sold [from a leasehold]” as a form of omitted property, CRS §§ 29-1-301(1) and 39-10-107(1)—the Court concluded that the assessor had statutory authority to issue the assessment in this case. The Court further concluded that the Board of Assessment Appeals did not err in determining that Kinder Morgan had underreported the wellhead selling price of CO₂. The Court therefore affirmed the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

The Supreme Court concluded that the designated groundwater court properly concluded that petitioners failed to satisfy their statutory burden in seeking to de-designate a portion of a designated groundwater basin, and therefore, properly denied the petition to de-designate a portion of the basin. The Court also concluded that the designated groundwater court properly awarded respondents a portion of their litigation costs as prevailing parties under CRCP 54(d). The Court affirmed the designated groundwater court in both cases.

The Supreme Court held that the prohibition on processing or manufacturing  marijuana or marijuana concentrate under CRS § 18-18-406(2)(a)(I) is not unconstitutional as applied to Austin Lente, who used butane to extract hash oil from marijuana. Although “processing . . . marijuana plants” is a protected personal activity under Colorado’s Amendment 64, “manufacturing . . . marijuana” is protected only as a facility-operation activity that requires a license. At the time Amendment 64 was  approved, Colorado law established that extracting hash oil was manufacturing, not processing, and the Supreme Court assumes Amendment 64 adopted that settled meaning. Because Lente was unlicensed, he could not manufacture hash oil under cover of the constitution. Accordingly, the Court reversed the district court’s order that ruled the statute is unconstitutional as applied to Lente.

In this appeal, the Supreme Court considered two issues from the district court’s review of a decision of the Colorado Public Utilities Commission (the Commission). Both issues pertain to a billing error that led Public Service Company of Colorado (Public Service) to undercharge Carestream Health, Inc. (Carestream) for gas it received over the course of a three-year period. The first issue is whether the Commission properly interpreted Public Service’s tariff, specifically the requirement to “exercise all reasonable means” to prevent billing errors. The Court concluded that determining what means are “reasonable,” as that term is used in the tariff, necessarily requires considering what errors are foreseeable. The Court therefore held that the Commission properly interpreted the tariff and acted pursuant to its authority. The second issue is whether Carestream had standing to challenge Public Service’s use of its tariff to recover a portion of the undercharge from its general customer base. Because Carestream suffered no injury from that action, it lacks standing to challenge it. The Court accordingly affirmed the district court’s judgment.

In this case, the Supreme Court reviewed the district court’s order affirming petitioner’s county court conviction for harassment. Petitioner asserted that pursuant to People v. Pickering, 276 P.3d 553 (Colo. 2011), self-defense is an affirmative defense to all crimes requiring intent, knowledge, or willfulness. She thus contended that (1) she was entitled to a self-defense affirmative defense instruction to the specific intent crime of harassment, and (2) the county court’s refusal to give such an instruction constituted reversible error. Because Pickering does not establish the broad, bright-line rule that petitioner asserts and thus does not require a trial court to give a self-defense affirmative defense instruction in every case requiring intent, knowledge, or willfulness, the Court affirmed the district court’s judgment.