DENVER -- Terry Lynn Barton will have to wait a while longer to be re-sentenced.

Barton is the 42-year-old former U.S. Forest Service employee who admitted setting the largest wildfire in Colorado history. The 2002 Hayman fire charred 138,000 acres and destroyed 133 houses.

Barton's public defender, Mark Walta said the Colorado Supreme Court agreed in May to review a similar sentencing situation from Montezuma County, and Barton's case has been put on hold pending the outcome of the Montezuma case.

"It's almost certainly going to bear on this case," he said.

Walta said the issue may not be clarified until sometime this fall.

District Judge Edward Colt sentenced Barton to 12 years in prison, or double the normal maximum, after ruling there were aggravating circumstances, but the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled that a jury, not Colt, should have made that finding.

The court said Barton's sentence was too harsh and also had at least "the appearance of prejudice" because Colt was an evacuee of the fire.

Fourth Judicial District Judge Thomas Kennedy ruled this year that a jury could consider whether enough aggravating circumstances existed to justify Barton's sentence.

Prosecutors want the jury to consider the fire's massive damage, Barton's role as a Forest Service worker at the time of the fire and the fact that she initially lied to investigators, among other factors.

Barton said she started the fire in Teller County after burning a letter from her estranged husband in a fire pit.

Barton had been serving her state sentence simultaneously with a six-year sentence she received after pleading guilty to federal charges including arson. She is being held at the Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas.

Last week, several dozen homeowners in Douglas County were forced from their homes because of flooding as the result of runoff from the barren Hayman burn area.