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IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF IDAHO

Docket No. 38285

STATE OF IDAHO,

Plaintiff-Respondent,

v.

ALBERT RAY MOORE,

Defendant-Appellant.

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2011 Opinion No. 76

Filed: December 21, 2011

Stephen W. Kenyon, Clerk

Appeal from the District Court of the Fourth Judicial District, State of Idaho, Ada

County. Hon. Michael R. McLaughlin, District Judge. 

Second amended judgment of conviction for felony driving under the influence, 

affirmed.

Nevin, Benjamin, McKay & Bartlett; Deborah A. Whipple, Boise, for appellant. 

Hon. Lawrence G. Wasden, Attorney General; Elizabeth A. Koeckeritz, Deputy 

Attorney General, Boise, for respondent. 

________________________________________________

LANSING, Judge

Albert Ray Moore appeals from the district court’s second amended judgment of 

conviction for driving under the influence, which the district court said it issued to correct a 

clerical error in the first amended judgment of conviction. At issue is whether the district court 

possessed authority to enter the second amended judgment.

I.

FACTS AND PROCEDURE

In two cases filed in 2006 and 2007, Moore was charged with driving under the influence 

(DUI). In each case, the charge was enhanced to a felony pursuant to Idaho Code § 18-8005(5) 

on grounds that Moore had twice previously been convicted of DUI within the preceding ten 

years, including a conviction in North Dakota. In both Idaho DUI cases, Moore challenged the 

State’s reliance on the North Dakota conviction on the contentions that it did not qualify as a
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“substantially conforming foreign criminal conviction” under Idaho Code § 18-8005(5),1 and 

that the conviction was constitutionally defective. After the district court denied Moore’s motion 

to dismiss the present case on either basis, Moore entered a conditional guilty plea. His plea 

reserved the right to appeal several of the district court’s rulings, including the court’s rejection 

of Moore’s challenge to the State’s use of the North Dakota conviction. The district court 

entered a judgment of conviction imposing a unified sentence of six years, with one year fixed. 

In Moore’s other DUI case, he pleaded not guilty and went to trial. In that trial, the 

district court admitted evidence of the North Dakota DUI conviction over Moore’s objection that 

it was not a substantially conforming foreign criminal conviction, that the Wyoming conviction 

was constitutionally defective, and that the documentary evidence of that conviction was not 

properly authenticated. Moore appealed in both cases. 

The two appeals were consolidated and addressed by this Court in State v. Moore, 148 

Idaho 887, 231 P.3d 532 (Ct. App. 2010). We affirmed the district court’s determination that the 

North Dakota DUI conviction was “substantially conforming” and that Moore had not shown 

that conviction to be constitutionally defective. These rulings rejected the challenges to use of 

the North Dakota conviction that Moore had made before the district court in this case. 

However, we also vacated the judgment of conviction in his other DUI case because the 

documentary evidence of the North Dakota conviction was not properly authenticated and 

therefore had been wrongly admitted at trial. Id. at 892-99, 231 P.3d at 537-44.

In that appeal, Moore contended that he and the district court had “agreed” at the change 

of plea hearing in the present case that his guilty plea could be set aside if he obtained any

appellate relief in the other case regarding the North Dakota conviction. He argued that because 

this Court had determined that documentary evidence of the North Dakota conviction was 

wrongly admitted at trial in the other case due to lack of proper authentication, the present case 

should be remanded for “further proceedings as intended by the district court.” Id. at 903-04, 

231 P.3d at 548-49. Because ambiguous statements made at Moore’s change of plea hearing 

concerning the scope of the reserved issue left open this possibility, we remanded this case “for 

 

1 Idaho Code § 18-8005 at that time provided that a DUI could be elevated to a felony in 

certain circumstances based upon prior convictions for violation of Idaho’s DUI statutes or a 

“substantially conforming foreign criminal violation.”
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proceedings consistent with our opinion and the Rule 11 plea agreement.” Id. at 904, 231 P.3d at

549.

On remand, the district court determined that the reservations in Moore’s conditional 

guilty plea were not as broad as Moore contended in that he did not reserve a right to relief from 

his guilty plea if the Court of Appeals found evidentiary trial error in the other case. The district 

court therefore effectively denied Moore’s motion to withdraw his guilty plea. Perhaps so that 

Moore would have a written document from which to appeal, the district court stated its intent to 

enter an amended judgment which would “impose the sentence as earlier set out in the Court’s 

judgment.” Later in the same hearing, the district court said that it would “impose the sentence 

of one year fixed, four years indeterminate for five years,” which was not an accurate statement 

of the original sentence. On June 11, 2010, the amended judgment of conviction was entered, 

stating a unified sentence of five years, with one year fixed. Moore did not appeal, and neither 

did the State.

On September 10, 2010, the State filed a motion to amend the judgment of conviction a 

second time to “correct an apparent clerical mistake.” The State pointed out that the original 

judgment of conviction imposed a unified sentence of six years, with one year fixed and that 

because at the hearing on remand the district court had stated its intent to “impose” that sentence 

again, its amended judgment of conviction stating a unified sentence of five years, with one year

fixed, was a mistake. Over Moore’s protestations, the district court agreed that it had made a 

clerical mistake correctable under Idaho Criminal Rule 36, and entered a second amended 

judgment of conviction expressing a unified sentence of six years, with one year fixed. Moore 

appeals.

II.

ANALYSIS

On appeal, Moore asserts that the district court did not have jurisdiction to enter the 

second amended judgment of conviction because I.C.R. 36 allows the correction of only clerical 

errors, and not a judicial error as Moore contends occurred here. The State counters that the 

district court exceeded the scope of this Court’s remand from the earlier appeal and had no 

authority to enter the initial amended judgment in the first instance. Therefore, reasons the State, 

the original judgment of conviction, and the sentence it expressed, remain in effect. We do not 

find it necessary to resolve the issue raised by the State because, even assuming the district court 
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possessed authority to enter the initial amended judgment on remand, Moore has shown no right 

to relief.

Moore claims that the district court erred by determining that I.C.R. 36 authorized the 

court to make the correction that it did. The rule states:

Clerical mistakes in judgments, orders or other parts of the record and 

errors in the record arising from oversight or omission may be corrected by the 

court at any time and after such notice, if any, as the court orders.

Relief under I.C.R. 36 and its civil counterpart, Idaho Rule of Civil Procedure 60(a), is strictly 

limited to the correction of clerical errors, as opposed to judicial or legal errors. Silsby v. 

Kepner, 140 Idaho 410, 412, 95 P.3d 28, 30 (2004); State v. Phillips, 99 Idaho 354, 355, 581 

P.2d 1173, 1174 (1978); State v. Allen, 144 Idaho 875, 878, 172 P.3d 1150, 1153 (Ct. App. 

2007). The court’s intent must be expressed on the record in the first instance before a later-filed 

document having content inconsistent with that intent can be corrected as a clerical error or 

mistake under the rules. Silsby, 140 Idaho at 412, 95 P.3d at 30; Allen, 144 Idaho at 878, 172

P.3d at 1153. This judicially-imposed limitation exists to ensure that a trial court does not use 

either rule as a vehicle to simply change its mind and exercise its discretion differently from the 

way it was exercised in the original determination. Silsby, 140 Idaho at 412, 95 P.3d at 30. In 

the context of criminal sentencing specifically, this Court has stated that I.C.R. 36 “does not 

provide a vehicle by which a trial court may amend a sentence to give effect to the court’s 

previously unstated intent that alters the sentence.” Allen, 144 Idaho at 878, 172 P.3d at 1153.

Hence, if the proceeding at issue here had been a sentencing hearing at which a court was 

required to orally pronounce sentence, Rule 36 could not have been used to later “correct” the 

judgment to state a sentence different from the one that was orally imposed. Allen, 144 Idaho at 

878, 172 P.3d at 1153; State v. Wallace, 116 Idaho 930, 932, 782 P.2d 53, 55 (Ct. App. 1989). 

Based on this principle, Moore asserts that the district court’s oral recitation at the remand 

hearing of a “sentence of one year fixed, four years indeterminate for five years” controls.

The foundation for Moore’s assertion is the district court’s statement at the remand 

proceeding that it would “impose” a sentence. However, contrary to Moore’s repeated assertions 

otherwise, the remand proceeding here was not a sentencing hearing. Instead, this Court 

remanded the case for the district court to determine the scope of the conditions on Moore’s 

conditional guilty plea, specifically, whether it was a condition that the plea could be withdrawn 
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if Moore obtained relief on appeal in his other case on an issue other than the constitutional and 

the statutory “substantially conforming” challenges to the use of the North Dakota conviction. 

Regardless of the district court’s determination of this question on remand, no resentencing was 

necessary. If Moore prevailed on remand, he would be entitled to withdrawal of the guilty plea, 

and if he did not prevail, the original judgment and sentence would remain in effect. The district 

court’s use of the parlance “impose” at the remand proceeding was inaccurate and ill-advised 

because Moore’s sentence had been imposed before the first appeal. In any event, the district 

court did not purport to resentence Moore but, instead, stated an intent to reiterate the original 

sentence. Based on the district court’s comments at the hearing, the only reason the court 

entered an amended judgment was to create a filed decision from which Moore could again 

appeal.2 

Thus, the district court had no intent to make a substantive change to the sentence 

already in place. The mistake that the court made was in describing that extant sentence as “one 

year fixed, four years indeterminate for five years” as opposed to the actual sentence of one year 

fixed followed by five years indeterminate for a unified sentence of six years. The correction 

made in the second amended judgment was to effectuate the court’s intent as stated on the record 

at the remand hearing. The district court possessed authority to make this correction under 

I.C.R. 36. Therefore, the district court did not err in correcting the amended judgment through 

entry of the second amended judgment.

The second amended judgment of conviction is affirmed. 

Judge GUTIERREZ and Judge MELANSON CONCUR.

 

2 While this may have been a way to accomplish what the district court sought to do, see

State v. Payan, 128 Idaho 866, 867, 920 P.2d 82, 83 (Ct. App. 1996), the better method would 

have been for the district court to enter an order denying Moore’s motion to withdraw his plea. 

Such an order would have been appealable as an “order made after judgment affecting the 

substantial rights of the defendant.” Idaho Appellate Rule 11(c)(9).