Bright-Line Rule: Criminal Violation of a Protection Order Qualifies as the Predicate “Crime Against Another Person or Property” for Second Degree Burglary

Case: People v. Dilka, 2026 CO 12, 25SA187 (Colo. Mar. 2, 2026)

Court: Colorado Supreme Court (en banc)

Posture: Original proceeding under C.A.R. 21 challenging a bind-over ruling at a preliminary hearing

1. Introduction

People v. Dilka addresses a recurring charging question at the intersection of burglary and protection-order enforcement: when a defendant unlawfully enters a protected person’s home (or other prohibited location) in violation of a protection order, does that protection-order violation itself satisfy burglary’s “intent to commit therein a crime against another person or property” element?

The People charged Robert Joe Dilka with second degree burglary after he entered his ex-wife’s home while a mandatory protection order (issued under section 18-1-1001, C.R.S. (2025)) prohibited contact and barred him from her home. At the preliminary hearing, Dilka did not contest entry-related facts; instead, he argued the protection-order violation was not, as a matter of law, a “crime against another person or property” for burglary purposes. The district court, relying on People v. Rhorer, bound the burglary charge over for trial.

The Colorado Supreme Court took the case under C.A.R. 21 to resolve an unreviewable-on-appeal preliminary-hearing legal issue and to provide statewide guidance on statutory interpretation. The majority reaffirmed a categorical rule from Rhorer; Justice Gabriel dissented, urging a fact-specific approach and warning of overbreadth and unjust outcomes.

2. Summary of the Opinion

The Court held that, under People v. Rhorer, a criminal violation of a protection order under section 18-6-803.5, C.R.S. (2025), is categorically a “crime against another person or property” and therefore can serve as the predicate crime for second degree burglary under section 18-4-203(1), C.R.S. (2025). The Court characterized Rhorer as establishing a bright-line rule, reaffirmed that the rule is consistent with the burglary statute’s text and the legislative purpose of protection-order enforcement, discharged the order to show cause, and remanded for further proceedings.

Dissent (Justice Gabriel): Rhorer did not decide the “crime against person or property” question; not every protection-order violation meets that definition; and a categorical rule improperly lowers the prosecution’s burden and may yield absurd and unjust burglary liability in comparatively benign protection-order-violation scenarios.

3. Analysis

A. Precedents Cited

People v. Rhorer, 967 P.2d 147 (Colo. 1998)

Rhorer is the controlling precedent and the centerpiece of Dilka. In Rhorer, the defendant broke into an ex-girlfriend’s home while subject to a no-contact order; the jury convicted of second degree burglary based solely on intent to violate the no-contact order. The court of appeals had reversed, concluding the order was municipal and therefore not “a crime,” and reasoning that intent to violate a court order did not satisfy burglary’s “intent to commit therein a crime against a person or property” element.

The Colorado Supreme Court reversed in Rhorer, grounding its decision in section 18-6-803.5’s criminalization of protection-order violations and stating that intent to violate the no-contact order by breaking in “fulfilled” burglary’s predicate-crime element. In Dilka, the Court treated those statements as categorical: a criminal protection-order violation is itself a qualifying “crime against another person or property.”

People v. Justice, 2023 CO 9, 524 P.3d 1178
Cited for the proposition that the Court has sole discretion to exercise original jurisdiction under C.A.R. 21.
People v. Cortes-Gonzalez, 2022 CO 14, 506 P.3d 835
Quoted via Justice on C.A.R. 21’s discretionary original jurisdiction principles.
People v. Walthour, 2023 CO 55, 537 P.3d 371
Cited for when Rule 21 relief is appropriate (inadequate appellate remedy; irreparable harm; issues of significant public importance).
People v. Kilgore, 2020 CO 6, 455 P.3d 746
Quoted via Walthour on Rule 21 criteria, emphasizing public-importance issues not yet considered.
People v. Nichelson, 219 P.3d 1064 (Colo. 2009)
Provides the crucial jurisdictional hook: preliminary-hearing probable cause determinations are unreviewable on appeal, making C.A.R. 21 potentially the only route to review.
White v. MacFarlane, 713 P.2d 366 (Colo. 1986)
Establishes abuse-of-discretion review for probable cause determinations at preliminary hearings.
People v. Webb, 2014 CO 36, 325 P.3d 566
Provides the de novo standard for legal questions embedded in probable cause rulings (statutory interpretation).
Town of Minturn v. Tucker, 2013 CO 3, 293 P.3d 581
Reiterates the lodestar of statutory interpretation: ascertain and effectuate legislative intent, starting with the text.
McCoy v. People, 2019 CO 44, 442 P.3d 379
Cited for reading statutory language in context to give consistent, harmonious, sensible effect to all parts.
People v. Poindexter, 2013 COA 93, 338 P.3d 352

Not followed by the majority as binding authority (it is a court of appeals decision), but central to the dissent’s framework. The dissent uses Poindexter’s Black’s Law Dictionary-based definitions to argue that “crimes against persons” involve use or threat of force (or crimes against the body), while “crimes against property” involve deriving unlawful benefit from or damaging property without force; hence, a mere location-based protection-order violation does not necessarily fit either category.

Cooper v. People, 973 P.2d 1234 (Colo. 1999)
Cited to support the interpretive weight of official comments to the burglary statutes when analyzing statutory history and scope.

How these precedents influenced the outcome: The jurisdictional and standard-of-review cases (Nichelson, Justice, Walthour, White, Webb) explain why the Court heard the case and how it reviewed it. The interpretive cases (Town of Minturn, McCoy, Cooper) frame the Court’s method for reading sections 18-4-203 and 18-6-803.5. But Rhorer supplies the decisive rule: the majority treats it as already resolving the predicate-crime question categorically, while the dissent reads Rhorer as addressing a narrower “is it a crime at all?” issue.

B. Legal Reasoning

1. The statutory elements at issue

Second degree burglary requires unlawful entry or remaining “with intent to commit therein a crime against another person or property.” § 18-4-203(1). The dispute was not over entry but over the “intent to commit therein” element—specifically, whether intent to violate a protection order necessarily counts as intent to commit a qualifying “crime against another person or property.”

2. The majority’s core move: converting Rhorer into a bright-line rule

The majority reads Rhorer as expressly and categorically holding that protection-order violations qualify as burglary predicate crimes. It emphasizes Rhorer’s language that intent to violate a no-contact order by breaking into a home “fulfilled” the burglary element requiring intent to commit a crime against a person or property, and it treats that statement as dispositive rather than fact-bound.

3. Text and purpose: why the majority finds the bright-line rule “fits”

Because § 18-4-203(1) does not define “crime against another person or property,” the Court adopts a “plain and ordinary meaning” approach and describes the phrase as covering offenses involving harm or threatened harm to persons or property. It then turns to § 18-6-803.5’s definition of “protection order,” which broadly covers orders prohibiting contact, harassment, intimidation, threats, and entering/remained on premises, along with other provisions designed to protect a person (or “protected animal”) from imminent danger to life or health.

The Court reinforces this purposive reading with legislative declarations and adjacent statutory policy:

  • Section 13-14-100.2’s declaration that protection orders “promote safety, reduce violence and other types of abuse, and prevent serious harm and death,” and that unwanted contact and stalking cause serious emotional and physical distress.
  • Section 18-1-1001’s rationale for mandatory criminal protection orders to prevent witness/victim intimidation, retaliation, or harassment, and to protect safety.

From these provisions, the majority concludes that violating such an order “innately threatens a protected person’s safety,” producing exactly the type of harm—psychological, emotional, and potentially physical—that these orders aim to prevent. That functional understanding supplies the bridge from “protection-order violation” to “crime against a person or property” for burglary purposes.

4. The dissent’s competing reasoning: element-by-element proof and fact-specific inquiry

Justice Gabriel’s dissent accepts that many protection-order violations can be crimes against persons or property, but rejects the categorical approach. Relying on People v. Poindexter’s definitions, the dissent argues that some violations—e.g., entering a prohibited space without force or threats and without any encounter, or entering to retrieve one’s own property—do not necessarily fit “crime against person” or “crime against property.”

The dissent’s central doctrinal concern is that a bright-line rule effectively collapses an element of burglary: if any protection-order violation automatically counts as a crime against person or property, then the prosecution is relieved of proving that aspect beyond a reasonable doubt in the class of burglary cases involving protection orders. The dissent also predicts “absurd and unjust results,” where comparatively nonviolent, nonthreatening conduct could become a class 3 or class 4 felony burglary simply because it violated a location-based protection order.

Finally, the dissent reads Rhorer as deciding a narrower question—whether a municipal-ordinance-issued no-contact order could serve as a predicate “crime” at all—and not as resolving the separate “crime against person or property” classification question now presented.

C. Impact

1. Charging and preliminary-hearing practice

Dilka is likely to have immediate operational consequences in domestic relations, stalking, and criminal cases with mandatory protection orders: prosecutors can more reliably plead and prove second degree burglary where the “intent to commit therein” element is satisfied by intent to violate § 18-6-803.5, without litigating whether the particular violation “looks like” a crime against a person or property under narrower definitions.

2. Doctrinal clarity: a bright-line predicate offense

The Court frames the rule as categorical, reducing uncertainty across districts and limiting trial courts’ discretion to treat protection-order violations as non-qualifying predicates. This will likely narrow the utility of defense arguments that focus on benign motives (e.g., retrieving property) at the bind-over stage.

3. Increased felony exposure and bargaining leverage

Because second degree burglary is a felony (class 3 or class 4 depending on circumstances), the decision may increase felony exposure in cases that might otherwise be charged as trespass plus protection-order violation. That, in turn, could affect plea negotiations and pretrial detention decisions, especially where entry into a dwelling is involved.

4. Litigation likely to shift to “intent” and other burglary elements

With the predicate-crime classification largely settled (at least for § 18-6-803.5 violations), defense litigation may concentrate on whether the defendant had the requisite intent at the moment of entry/remain, whether entry/remain was unlawful, and on factual disputes about the scope and service/notice of the protection order—rather than on whether the order violation is the “right type” of crime for burglary.

5. Potential future fault lines

  • Scope of the bright-line rule: Dilka repeatedly ties the rule to “criminal violation of a protection order under section 18-6-803.5.” Future disputes may ask whether all § 18-6-803.5 violations (including technical or minimal-contact violations) qualify identically.
  • Constitutional and proportionality challenges: The dissent’s “absurd and unjust results” critique may reappear in proportionality arguments in extreme fact patterns.
  • Interaction with appellate standards: Because bind-over determinations are generally unreviewable on appeal (Nichelson), C.A.R. 21 may continue to be the vehicle for systemic guidance when trial courts diverge from this bright-line rule.

4. Complex Concepts Simplified

  • C.A.R. 21 “original proceeding”: A discretionary, extraordinary mechanism allowing the Colorado Supreme Court to intervene mid-case when normal appellate review is inadequate (here, because preliminary-hearing rulings are usually unreviewable on appeal).
  • Preliminary hearing and “probable cause” bind-over: A screening stage where the prosecution must show enough evidence to justify sending the felony charge to trial; it is not a determination of guilt.
  • Second degree burglary’s “predicate crime” requirement: Burglary is not just unlawful entry; it is unlawful entry (or remaining) plus intent to commit an additional qualifying crime inside.
  • “Crime against another person or property”: The burglary statute uses this phrase without defining it. The majority reads it broadly as offenses involving harm or threatened harm; the dissent urges narrower, dictionary-based categories (force/threat for person-crimes; unlawful benefit/damage for property-crimes).
  • Bright-line rule vs. case-by-case test: A bright-line rule applies uniformly, reducing fact-specific litigation. A case-by-case test requires courts to decide, based on the particular facts, whether the element is met.
  • Standards of review (abuse of discretion vs. de novo): The Court defers to trial courts on discretionary calls (abuse of discretion) but decides legal interpretation issues independently (de novo).

5. Conclusion

People v. Dilka reaffirms and crystallizes People v. Rhorer into an explicit bright-line rule: a criminal violation of a protection order under section 18-6-803.5 is categorically a “crime against another person or property” and can serve as the predicate crime for second degree burglary under section 18-4-203(1). The majority anchors this rule in the protective purpose and harm-prevention design of protection orders across Colorado’s statutory scheme.

The dissent spotlights a competing principle—element-by-element proof tethered to the facts—and warns that categorical treatment risks lowering the prosecution’s burden and expanding burglary liability into scenarios that may not intuitively involve person- or property-directed criminality. Regardless of that critique, Dilka supplies clear statewide guidance: where the prosecution can show unlawful entry (or remaining) with intent to violate a protection order, the predicate-crime component of second degree burglary is satisfied as a matter of law.