Before She Died, “Jane Roe” Said She Was Never Really Pro-Life: Does It Matter?

MICHAEL C. DORF

Cornell law professor Michael C. Dorf comments on the revelation that before she died, Norma McCorvey—the woman who was the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade and who had subsequently become a prominent spokesperson for overturning the decision—said she was never really pro-life after all. Using this example, Dorf explains why, in some ways, the individual plaintiff’s identity does not matter for the purpose of deciding an important legal issue, yet in other ways, the plaintiff’s underlying story can be very important for other reasons.

Read More

Colorado v. Espinoza

Citation: 2020 CO 43

Opinion Date: May 26, 2020

Judge: Coats

Areas of Law: Constitutional Law, Criminal Law

The State petitioned for review the court of appeals' judgment reversing a trial court's imposition of consecutive sentences for respondent Martin Espinoza's ten convictions of attempted first degree murder of ten different people. Espinoza was charged with first degree arson, third degree assault, and attempted first degree murder (extreme indifference), with corresponding crime-of-violence counts, arising out of an incident in which a fire raged through his mother’s apartment. Respondent started a fire on the balcony of his mother’s apartment, which spread throughout the apartment building and to a neighboring building. The ten people who were named victims of the attempted murder counts were inside the defendant’s mother’s apartment building during the fire but were able to escape and survive. Reasoning that Espinoza’s ten attempted murder convictions were separate crimes of violence, the trial court considered itself bound by statute to impose consecutive sentences. The intermediate appellate court, however, found that because the ten convictions were premised on a “single act of fire-setting,” they were supported by identical evidence, notwithstanding the fact that each conviction required proof that the defendant attempted to kill a different person. Further concluding that convictions for multiple crimes of violence that were supported by identical evidence did not fall within the statutory mandate to sentence consecutively, the intermediate appellate court reversed and remanded for resentencing. The Colorado Supreme Court found that because offenses defined in terms of their victimization of another and committed against different victims were not capable of being proved by identical evidence within the contemplation of section 18-1-408(3), C.R.S. (2019), and because even according to the appellate court’s understanding of the term “separate crimes of violence,” Espinoza’s convictions therefore required consecutive sentences pursuant to section 18-1.3-406(1)(a), C.R.S. (2019), the Supreme Court reversed the judgment of the court of appeals.