Colorado lawmakers are set to consider a bill this year that would allow sentencing reviews for some people in prison who have already served a significant amount of time.

Senate Bill 26-115 passed its first committee hearing last week on a 4-3 vote and now heads to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

“The heart of this policy is to encourage people who receive long sentences to sign up for programming, to embrace accountability and to do the hard work involved in the rehabilitation that changes their lives, their approaches and their futures,” bill sponsor Senator Julie Gonzales, a Denver Democrat, told fellow lawmakers.

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“As a Legislature, the most destructive message we can send is that we’re indifferent to their change,” she said. “Human beings need hope. Second (look) hearings provide that motivation.”

She is running the bill alongside Senator Mike Weissman, an Aurora Democrat. It does not yet have a House sponsor.

The bill would allow certain people who are incarcerated to ask a judge to reconsider their sentence after 20 years in prison. It would apply to people over the age of 60 and people who committed their crime when they were younger than 21. They would be able to petition the court for a merit-based reconsideration one time and get one hearing to explore evidence.

A new sentence, if a judge grants it, could be at least 25 years but no longer than the original sentence, and it could include up to five years of parole, meaning a person could ask for a sentence review, be given a new sentence and then be released on parole.

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It would exclude — unless the prosecution agrees with the relief petition — people convicted of sex offenses, human trafficking, crimes against children and crimes against first responders, as well as people convicted of a life sentence without parole.

That means 137 people in Colorado prisons would be eligible to petition the court, according to a state fiscal analysis of the bill.

Weissman said the bill is a measured, yet impactful, version of the “second look” concept for Colorado to try. The existing ways to reconsider a sentence in the state, including clemency from the governor and the Juveniles Prosecuted as Adults program, affect very few people.

“When we sentence somebody, when we evaluate a person in the courtroom or in the context of a plea deal, we are passing judgement on the person that exists at that moment,” Weissman said. “That’s all we can do. Decades later, when we’re considering the question of whether a person should walk free again, I submit that we should be less interested in who that person was, than who they are today and who they’ve become inside.”

Colorado would join six other states and Washington, D.C., to enact a “second look” policy that takes into account the age of the incarcerated person and how long they have been in prison. A three-year, prosecutor-initiated resentencing pilot program in California resulted in 16 percent of the 1,146 reviewed individuals getting released from prison, according to an analysis from the research organization RAND.

Opponents cite victims

“Second look laws provide a ‘north star’ for long-term prisoners, making clear from the outset that prosocial conduct and personal growth can provide a pathway out of prison,” said Logan Seacrest, a fellow with the R Street Institute. “This motivates individuals to comply with correctional authorities and invest in themselves, making institutions safer and improving reentry outcomes.”

David Carillo told lawmakers about his own personal transformation while in prison. He was sentenced to life without parole for being involved in a murder when he was 19 years old, and at first he got into trouble and “fell into the prison politics.”

“But I realized I needed to make some changes in my life,” he said. That included earning associate’s, bachelor’s and master’s degrees and eventually becoming one of the first incarcerated college professor in the country. Governor Jared Polis granted him clemency in 2024.

“When I was awarded that opportunity to (become a professor), that inspired a lot of hope in the individuals in the prison,” he said. “Considering my background and my history, for someone like me to make a complete 180 in my behavior and my reputation — to see the possibility of something like that, it inspired a lot of change in the facility.”

To opponents, however, such a policy would strip the finality of sentencing and erode the security of victims, who would need to be notified of a review petition and could be re-traumatized decades after the crime happened.

“What I will be telling victims is that the one thing I used to be able to try and get you — finality, something that you can then now take and move on, live out the rest of your life, continue the healing process — I will say I can’t give you even that,” Nate Marsh, a deputy district attorney for the 23rd Judicial District said during a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Marsh is a Republican running for a state House seat.

George Brauchler, the Republican district attorney for the 23rd Judicial District, said people who are incarcerated already have opportunities for earlier release through the earned time mechanism.

“This idea that what’s missing from the system is hope … if it is, it’s missing hope for the victim’s families, hope they can move past this, hope for finality,” he told lawmakers.

The Colorado District Attorney’s Council and the Colorado Organization for Victim Assistance are opposed to the bill.