Hagos v. People

29 Just last year, this court stated that, in order to maintain a claim of plain error, a defendant must demonstrate "a reasonable possibility that the [error] contributed to the defendant's conviction." Tumentsereg v. People, 247 P.3d 1015, 1019 (Colo.2011) (emphasis added). This standard has been a mainstay of our plain error jurisprudence for at least four decades, having been cited in literally hundreds of Colorado cases. Yet the majority today jettisons this standard as a forty-year wrong turn, all in an effort to show that plain error prejudice is actually a higher standard than that…