Colo. R. App. P. 51.1
In all appeals from criminal convictions or postconviction relief matters from or after July 1, 1974, a litigant is not required to petition for rehearing and certiorari following an adverse decision of the intermediate appellate court in order to be deemed to have exhausted all available state remedies respecting a claim of error. Rather, the litigant will have exhausted all available state remedies when a claim has been presented to the intermediate appellate court or the supreme court, and relief has been denied or when relief has been denied in the intermediate appellate court and the time for petitioning for certiorari review has expired.
If a litigant's petition for federal habeas corpus is dismissed or denied for failure to exhaust state remedies based on a decision that this rule is ineffective, the litigant may file a motion to recall the mandate together with a writ of certiorari presenting any claim of error not previously presented in reliance on this rule. Any motion to recall the mandate must be filed within 49 days after entry of the federal court's dismissal or denial order.
C.A.R. 51.1
RECENT ANNOTATIONS
Section (a) permits state prisoners to exhaust all available state remedies without seeking discretionary relief from the state supreme court, rendering state supreme court review "unavailable" for purposes of federal Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 exhaustion. Ellis v. Raemisch, 872 F.3d 1064 (10th Cir. 2017).
Annotation Section (a) does not require a litigant to raise a claim in the supreme court if he or she has already raised it in the court of appeals and been denied relief. Once a litigant raises a claim before the court of appeals, and relief is denied, "all available state remedies" are deemed unavailable. Al-Yousif v. Trani, 11 F. Supp. 3d 1032 (D. Colo. 2014), rev'd on other grounds, 779 F.3d 1173 (10th Cir. 2015). .