People v. Chronis.
2025 COA 72. No. 23CA1376. Sex Offender Registration—Petition for Removal From Registry—Lifetime Mandatory Registration—Adjudications as a Juvenile—Eighth Amendment—Cruel and Unusual Punishments—Ex Post Facto Clause—Applicable Expungement Statute.
August 14, 2025
In 2009, Chronis engaged in sexually explicit conversations with an undercover investigator posing as an underage teenage girl. He was subsequently arrested and pleaded guilty to criminal attempt (internet luring of a child). In 2010, the district court sentenced Chronis to two years of probation, requiring him to register as a sex offender. His probation was terminated in 2012 on the recommendation of his probation officer. In 2022, Chronis petitioned to discontinue his sex offender registration, certifying that CRS § 16-22-113(3) did not make him ineligible for deregistration. He also certified that it had been 10 years since his conviction and that he had not been convicted of any subsequent crime involving unlawful sexual behavior. The prosecution requested that his petition be denied because of a 1991 juvenile adjudication in Denver Juvenile Court in which Chronis pleaded guilty to sexual assault in the third degree, making him ineligible for deregistration. The record does not show that the court ruled on the matter. Chronis again petitioned for deregistration in 2023 on the same grounds, arguing that he could deregister because his record in the 1991 case was expunged in 1995 and expunged adjudications do not preclude deregistration. The prosecution again opposed the petition, which the court denied without a hearing.
On appeal, Chronis contended that the plain language of CRS § 16-22-113(3)(c), considered in the context of the Colorado Sex Offender Registration Act (CSORA), does not prohibit deregistration based on expunged adjudications. Chronis asserted that expungement erases an adjudication, so it cannot provide a legal basis to deny deregistration for a petitioner with a conviction as an adult and one or more adjudications as a juvenile for unlawful sexual behavior. He further maintained that construing the statutes to require lifetime registration based on an expunged juvenile adjudication would create an unconstitutional ex post facto punishment. As relevant here, under § 16-22-113(3)(c), a person with a conviction as an adult and one or more adjudications as a juvenile for unlawful sexual behavior or for any other offense the underlying factual basis of which is unlawful sexual behavior is never eligible for deregistration. The court held that lifetime registration under § 16-22-113(3) based on a juvenile adjudication and an adult conviction does not implicate the Ex Post Facto Clause and does not constitute an unconstitutional punishment under the Eighth Amendment, because a defendant is not prohibited from deregistering solely because of a juvenile adjudication. Here, Chronis was adjudicated as a juvenile and was convicted as an adult for unlawful sexual behavior offenses, so his deregistration could be precluded based on an expunged adjudication.
Chronis also argued that because his 1991 adjudication was expunged in 1995, § 16-22-113(3)(c) does not render him ineligible for deregistration. The court held that a district court may consider an expunged juvenile adjudication when determining whether to grant a petition for deregistration as a sex offender under § 16-22-113(3)(c) if the applicable expungement statute permits the court to review the expunged adjudication. But the parties contested which expungement statute applied—the one in effect in 2022 or the one in effect in 1995 when the record was expunged. The court concluded that the statute in effect at the time of Chronis’s expungement, § 19-2-902(4) (1995), applies. Under that statute, the court was permitted to inspect Chronis’s expunged adjudication only on court order, after a hearing with good cause shown, where the interested parties received at least five days’ notice before the hearing. But based on the record, the court could not determine whether this occurred in Chronis’s case.
Chronis further contended that the rule of lenity should apply to bar the use of expunged juvenile adjudications in deregistration decisions. But the court found no ambiguity in the expungement statutes or CSORA, so the rule of lenity is not implicated.
The order was reversed and the case was remanded for the district court to hold a hearing to determine whether good cause exists to inspect Chronis’s expunged adjudication. Depending on its findings, it may then rely on the expunged adjudication to determine whether Chronis is eligible for deregistration.