## Facts

- Aaron Robert Palmer was convicted of multiple felonies arising from firing gunshots at several victims.
- One conviction was for conspiracy to commit reckless manslaughter, for which the trial court imposed a concurrent sentence.
- The Colorado Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that conspiracy to commit reckless manslaughter is a cognizable offense because conspiracy requires only agreement to engage in criminal conduct, not intent to cause a specific result.
- The Colorado Supreme Court granted review to decide whether conspiracy to commit reckless manslaughter exists under Colorado law.

## Issues

1. Whether Colorado law recognizes the offense of conspiracy to commit reckless manslaughter given conspiracy’s specific-intent requirements and reckless manslaughter’s recklessness standard as to death.

## Decision

- The Colorado Supreme Court held that conspiracy to commit reckless manslaughter is not a cognizable crime in Colorado.
- The court reversed the court of appeals on that issue.
- The court vacated Palmer’s conviction for conspiracy to commit reckless manslaughter.
- The case was remanded for further proceedings consistent with the disposition, leaving other convictions unaffected except as otherwise directed on remand.

## Legal Principles

- Conspiracy requires a specific intent to agree to commit a particular crime and a specific intent (conscious objective) to cause the result of the target offense.
- Reckless manslaughter requires conscious disregard of a substantial and unjustifiable risk of death, not an intent to cause death.
- A specific-intent inchoate offense cannot be predicated on a result offense defined by recklessness as to that result because the mental states are legally and logically inconsistent; one cannot intend to cause a death unintentionally.
- Prior decisions involving attempt or complicity do not control because attempt does not impose the same result-intent requirement as conspiracy, and complicity is a theory of liability rather than an independent crime.

## Conclusion

The court concluded that Colorado’s conspiracy statute demands an intent to bring about the proscribed result, which cannot be reconciled with reckless manslaughter’s definition of death as an unintended outcome caused through risk-taking, so the conspiracy conviction was vacated and the matter remanded.


Palmer v. People, 964 P.2d 524 (Colo. 1998)