Nelson v. Colorado
The Supreme Court ruled that Colorado could not force people whose convictions were reversed or vacated to prove their innocence in a separate lawsuit before getting back money the state had taken from them as costs, fees, or restitution.
Because the presumption of innocence is restored once a conviction is erased, the Court held that requiring a costly, high-burden court proceeding before a refund violates due process, striking down Colorado's Exoneration Act as applied to these routine refund claims.
“Colorado may not presume a person, adjudged guilty of no crime, nonetheless guilty enough for monetary exactions.”
The majority's core reason why the state cannot keep money tied to an invalidated conviction.
How it got here: Colorado trial courts denied or limited refunds; the Colorado Court of Appeals sided with the defendants, but the Colorado Supreme Court reversed, and the defendants sought Supreme Court review.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Shannon Nelson was convicted of abusing her children and ordered to pay over $8,000 in costs, fees, and restitution; her conviction was later reversed and she was acquitted at retrial. Louis Madden was convicted of sex-related offenses and ordered to pay over $4,000; his convictions were later reversed or vacated and the state chose not to retry him. Both asked Colorado to give back the money taken from them.
The question before the Court
If someone's conviction gets overturned for good, does the state have to automatically give back the court costs, fees, and restitution it took because of that conviction?
The Court's answer
Yes — the Court ruled that once a conviction is reversed or vacated with no retrial planned, the presumption of innocence returns, and Colorado cannot make a person prove her innocence in a separate civil lawsuit before getting back money the state took because of that now-invalid conviction. Colorado's Exoneration Act required exactly that kind of proof, so it violated due process.
The Court weighed the person's strong interest in getting their money back, the high risk that Colorado's demanding process would wrongly keep people from ever recovering it, and the state's lack of any legitimate claim to money tied to a conviction that no longer exists. Colorado may still require simple proof that the conviction was reversed and that the money was actually paid, but nothing more burdensome than that.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
People whose convictions are overturned and who paid money to the courts as a result no longer have to file a separate lawsuit and prove their innocence with strong evidence just to get that money back. States with similar laws that make refunds difficult or contingent on proving innocence may need to adopt simpler, more automatic refund procedures.
What changes now
The cases return to the Colorado courts for further proceedings consistent with the Court's ruling, meaning Nelson and Madden should be able to recover their money without satisfying the Exoneration Act's innocence requirement. Colorado had already passed new legislation, set to take effect after this decision, creating a more direct refund process, though the Court noted that law did not affect these particular cases. Other states with similar refund schemes may need to reassess whether their procedures meet this due process standard.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether defendants are owed broader compensation for all the economic harms of a wrongful conviction, such as lost wages or attorney's fees — only that costs, fees, and restitution tied directly to an invalidated conviction must be returned without a heightened innocence-proving process.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Alito
Justice Alito agreed the Colorado scheme violates due process but thought the historical, tradition-based Medina framework, not the modern Mathews balancing test, should govern because these rules are part of the criminal process. He traced a long common-law history of returning money paid under judgments later reversed, and argued the majority's Mathews-based reasoning does not adequately explain why full economic restoration isn't required. He also disagreed with treating restitution to crime victims the same as fees kept by the state, arguing restitution has civil-judgment features that may not always require automatic refunds.
Dissent — Justice Thomas
“But the Due Process Clause confers no substantive rights.”Thomas's objection that the majority skipped whether a property right existed at all.
Justice Thomas argued the majority skipped the threshold question of whether petitioners had any substantive property right to the money at all under state or federal law before analyzing what process was due. He contended Colorado law treated the funds as belonging to the state and victims once collected, that the Due Process Clause creates no substantive rights of its own, and that without an underlying property right, Colorado owed no procedure for returning the money.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied the Mathews v. Eldridge balancing test, the standard framework for deciding what procedures the government owes someone before or while depriving them of property, rather than the more historical, criminal-procedure-focused test from Medina v. California, because these cases involved an ongoing property deprivation after the criminal case had already ended, not a rule used during an active prosecution.
- Under the first Mathews factor, the private interest, the Court found that once a conviction is reversed with no retrial in the works, the presumption of innocence is restored, so the state can no longer treat the person as guilty enough to justify keeping money taken because of that conviction.
- Under the second factor, the risk of wrongful deprivation, the Court found Colorado's Exoneration Act created an unacceptable risk because it required defendants to prove actual innocence by clear and convincing evidence, offered no remedy at all for money tied to invalid misdemeanor convictions, and made pursuing a claim too costly relative to the amounts typically at stake.
- The Court rejected Colorado's argument that procedures adequate to compensate for lost liberty were also adequate for money, reasoning that seeking the return of one's own funds is different from seeking compensation for having been temporarily deprived of them.
- Under the third factor, the government's interest, the Court concluded Colorado had no legitimate interest in keeping money connected to a conviction that no longer exists, and the state pointed to no equitable reason that would justify holding onto the funds.
- Balancing all three factors together, the Court concluded that due process forbids Colorado from imposing anything beyond minimal proof — that the conviction was reversed and the money was paid — before returning the funds.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Distinguishes Medina v. California (505 U. S. 437)
The Court said Medina's test for criminal-process rules doesn't apply because this case involves property deprivation after the criminal case ended.