Colorado Court of Appeals People v. Poindexter 09CA0434

Decision here.

   Poindexter attacked a woman and stole her car, then led the police on a chase.  At the end of that, he jumped out of the car, broke into an apartment building and hid from the police in there.

   After he was caught, he was charged with burglary (among other things).  In order to meet the elements of burglary in Colorado, a person has to unlawfully enter or remain in a building or occupied structure with the intent to commit a crime against another person or property.  The prosecution's theory was that he broke into the apartment building with the intent to commit obstructing a peace officer.

   He was convicted, and appealed.  The Court of Appeals held that under these circumstances, obstructing a peace officer is not a crime against a person.  Rather than broadly classifying all crimes as either being against a person/property or not, the court decided to take a case-by-case approach, and look at whether or not the circumstances of the crime at issue support the definitions found in Black's Law Dictionary:

Against a person: A crime against the body of
another human being. The common-law offenses against
the person were murder, manslaughter, mayhem, rape,
assault, battery, robbery, false imprisonment, abortion,
seduction, kidnapping, and abduction.

Against property: a category of criminal offenses in which the
perpetrator seeks to derive an unlawful benefit from — or do damage
to — another's property without the use or threat of
force. Examples include burglary, theft, and arson (even
though arson may result in injury or death).

   In this case, Poindexter committed obstruction by hiding from the police: using an obstacle (the building) to hinder or impair the officers' enforcement of the penal law.  Not a crime against a person or property.  If he had committed obstruction by using force against the officers, that would have been a crime against a person, which would mean under those circumstances obstruction could be a predicate offense for burglary.

   Since in this case obstruction could support a burglary charge, that conviction was vacated.  His other convictions (vehicular eluding and aggravated motor vehicle theft) were upheld.  He had argued that the evidence didn't support the requisite recklessness for the vehicular eluding charge, and that without the eluding charge the aggravated motor vehicle theft charge couldn't stand.  The court recognized that driving at a high rate of speed and jumping from a car (which still had a passenger and then crashed into a snowplow) is reckless.