2020 UT App 8

THE UTAH COURT OF APPEALS

STATE OF UTAH,

Appellee,

v.

JOEL EDWARD BOYSZA,

Appellant.

Opinion

No. 20180670-CA

Filed January 3, 2020

Third District Court, West Jordan Department

The Honorable L. Douglas Hogan

No. 141401252

Sarah J. Carlquist, Attorney for Appellant

Sean D. Reyes and Karen A. Klucznik, Attorneys

for Appellee

JUDGE MICHELE M. CHRISTIANSEN FORSTER authored this Opinion, 

in which JUDGES DAVID N. MORTENSEN and RYAN M. HARRIS

concurred.

CHRISTIANSEN FORSTER, Judge:

¶1 As part of a plea agreement related to multiple counts of 

sexually abusing a child, Joel Edward Boysza agreed to complete 

an inpatient sex-offender treatment program in Minnesota. After 

completing a portion of the treatment program, Boysza was 

“adversely terminated” from the program during its final, 

outpatient transitional phase. The district court revoked Boysza’s 

probation and reinstated his prison sentence. Boysza appeals the 

revocation, arguing that the district court erred when it 

concluded that he had willfully violated the terms of his 

probation. We affirm.
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20180670-CA 2 2020 UT App 8

BACKGROUND

¶2 When Boysza’s stepdaughter was fifteen, she told her 

sister that Boysza had been sexually abusing her for the past 

nine years. Boysza was charged with multiple counts of sexual 

abuse, forcible sexual abuse, rape, and object rape of a child. He 

pleaded guilty to one count of rape, and the State agreed to 

dismiss the remaining charges. As part of the plea agreement, 

Boysza agreed to complete an out-of-state inpatient sex-offender 

treatment program and serve ten years’ probation with standard 

conditions applicable to sex offenders. The court accepted 

Boysza’s plea, but it made clear to him that if he violated his 

probation “in any way, shape, or form,” he would return to Utah 

for an order-to-show-cause hearing and the “original penalty[] 

would be back in play.” At sentencing, the court further advised 

Boysza that he was required to “complete” inpatient sexoffender treatment, warning him, “If you get kicked out, that’s a 

violation of your probation. We’re right back here with a first 

degree felony hanging over your head.” As relevant here, in 

addition to completing inpatient treatment, Boysza’s probation 

agreement prohibited him from possessing any materials that 

acted as a stimulus for his deviancy and from having any contact 

with children under the age of eighteen.

¶3 In March 2016, Boysza entered an inpatient sex-offender 

treatment program with Alpha Human Services (Alpha) in 

Minnesota. Alpha’s inpatient treatment had five phases—the 

first four consisting of inpatient therapy, with the final phase 

being post-residential transitional therapy. On entry, Boysza 

signed an agreement acknowledging the terms and conditions of 

his acceptance for admission into Alpha’s residential sexoffender treatment program. Among other conditions, Boysza 

agreed (1) to “abide by all program rules and procedures,” 

(2) that he would be terminated “for failing to make adequate 

progress in the program,” (3) that he would not “successfully 

complete the program until” he had “demonstrated the ability to 

date” and “form intimate social relationships with appropriate 

age peers,” and (4) that he would be subject to “termination from 
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20180670-CA 3 2020 UT App 8

the program” if he deleted text messages, photographs, or

emails.

¶4 In November 2017, Boysza, who had by this point 

progressed to the final stage of the program, was “adversely 

terminated” by Alpha “[d]ue to his lack of compliance with the 

rules, repeated dishonesty and his unwillingness to take 

treatment seriously.” Specifically, Alpha identified the following 

as among the reasons for Boysza’s termination: (1) having 

photographs of his minor daughter, other minor children, and 

his victim (i.e., his stepdaughter) on his cellphone; (2) being 

partially nude with a woman he was dating during treatment 

and failing to follow treatment rules with regard to intimacy in 

appropriate places; (3) communicating indirectly with a minor; 

(4) grooming a dating partner to believe that he was in contact 

with his daughter; (5) lying to Alpha staff about the ages of his 

dating partner’s children, about his dating partner’s knowledge 

of his offense, and about the storage of photographs of his minor 

daughter on a memory disk; and (6) deleting photographs and 

texts from his cellphone without staff permission.

¶5 In its motion for order to show cause, the State alleged 

that Boysza violated his probation by possessing photographs 

that acted as a stimulus for his deviancy, failing to complete the 

inpatient sex-offender treatment program in Minnesota, and 

having contact with children under eighteen years of age. In his 

defense, Boysza testified that he never used the photographs as a

stimulus. He also testified that he thought he was finished with 

the treatment program because he had completed its inpatient

portions and was “free to go.” But Boysza’s therapist from Alpha 

testified that such a dichotomy between the inpatient and 

residential phases of the treatment program was artificial. She 

stated that once Boysza completed the inpatient portion of the 

program, he segued to the outpatient portion. “But [he was] not 

done with the program. [He was] only done with part of the 

program,” and he would not be discharged until he had 

completed the entire program. His therapist further noted that 

Boysza had been told “on more than one occasion” that he 
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20180670-CA 4 2020 UT App 8

would be discharged from the program only after having 

completed all its phases.

¶6 While the district court determined that the State had 

submitted sufficient evidence for it to find that Boysza had 

violated his probation in several respects, the court was most 

concerned about Boysza’s failure to complete the inpatient 

treatment program. In summary, the court stated, “The key to 

the probation in this entire arrangement was that you 

successfully complete the programming. I don’t believe that 

could have been made any more clear the day of sentencing how 

important that was for you and you failed.” The court then 

revoked Boysza’s probation and imposed the original sentence 

of five years to life. Boysza appeals.

ISSUE AND STANDARD OF REVIEW

¶7 The sole issue on appeal is whether the district court erred 

when it revoked Boysza’s probation, finding that he had 

willfully violated its terms and conditions. “The decision to 

grant, modify, or revoke probation is in the discretion of the 

[district] court.” State v. Johnson, 2012 UT App 118, ¶ 2, 276 P.3d 

1254 (quotation simplified). Moreover, a district “court’s 

determinations underlying its conclusion that [a] defendant 

violated his probation are findings of fact [that this court] will 

not disturb unless clearly erroneous, i.e., against the clear weight 

of the evidence.” State v. Maestas, 2000 UT App 22, ¶ 12, 997 P.2d 

314. Thus, “we view the evidence of a probation violation in a 

light most favorable to the [district] court’s findings and 

substitute our own judgment only if the evidence is so deficient 

as to render the court’s action an abuse of discretion.” Id.

ANALYSIS

¶8 “To revoke probation, the [district] court must find a 

violation of the probation agreement by a preponderance of the 
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20180670-CA 5 2020 UT App 8

evidence. In addition, the [district] court must find, also by a 

preponderance of the evidence, that the violation was willful, 

and not merely the result of circumstances beyond the 

probationer’s control.” State v. Snyder, 2015 UT App 172, ¶ 7, 355 

P.3d 246 (quotation simplified). And it is well-settled “that a 

single violation of probation is legally sufficient to support a 

probation revocation.” State v. Legg, 2014 UT App 80, ¶ 11, 324 

P.3d 656; accord State v. Bilek, 2017 UT App 37, ¶ 2, 392 P.3d 990 

(per curiam); Snyder, 2015 UT App 172, ¶ 7.

¶9 Here, to revoke Boysza’s probation and impose the 

original prison sentence, the district court was required to find 

that Boysza willfully violated at least one of the terms of his 

probation, and it determined that Boysza had failed to complete 

the inpatient therapy program in Minnesota. A determination 

that Boysza willfully failed to complete the inpatient therapy 

program required “a finding that the probationer did not make 

bona fide efforts to meet the conditions of his probation.” State v. 

Hoffman, 2017 UT App 173, ¶ 10, 405 P.3d 855 (quotation 

simplified). In Hoffman, this court concluded that a defendant 

who became treatment resistant by refusing to engage in group 

treatment and by adopting a defensive attitude had failed to 

make a bona fide effort to complete the sex-offender treatment 

program. Id. ¶ 12. Similarly here, we cannot conclude that there 

was any error in the district court’s determination that Boysza 

resisted the benefits of treatment by intentionally engaging in a 

pattern of “dishonesty” and an “unwillingness to take treatment 

seriously.” As the district court observed, Boysza was wellaware of the treatment program’s rules because he had agreed to 

follow them when he was admitted to the program. We also 

cannot perceive any error in the court’s finding that Boysza 

repeatedly broke the rules of the program by having prohibited 

images on his cellphone, engaging in inappropriate displays of 

affection in public places, lying to Alpha’s staff about an array of 

proscribed behaviors, and deleting photographs and texts 

without staff permission. All of these actions constituted 

deliberate choices by Boysza not to follow the rules of Alpha and 

therefore supported the district court’s conclusion that Boysza 
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20180670-CA 6 2020 UT App 8

had not made a good faith effort to complete inpatient treatment. 

In short, Boysza knew Alpha’s rules and chose not to obey them, 

so he was “adversely terminated” from the program. His failure 

to follow the rules was not “accidental, the product of coercion, 

or the result of an honest mistake.” See Snyder, 2015 UT App 172, 

¶ 14. Rather, his failure to complete the program represented a 

willful violation of the terms of his probation.

¶10 The distinction Boysza makes between the inpatient and 

transitional portions of Alpha’s residential sex-offender 

treatment program strikes us as artificial and unpersuasive. 

Boysza’s own therapist stated that Alpha offered Boysza one 

program—not an inpatient and an outpatient program—and that 

Boysza was made aware of the singular nature of the program. 

Boysza, contrary to his representation otherwise, was explicitly 

told that he would not be considered to have completed the 

residential program until he had completed both its inpatient 

and transitional portions. Far from being a separate program, the 

transitional phase was integral to the program required by the 

terms of Boysza’s probation. Because Boysza engaged in actions 

that resulted in his termination during the transitional phase of 

the program, we can see no error in the court’s determination 

that Boysza did not complete the inpatient sex-offender 

treatment program and violated the terms of his probation.

CONCLUSION

¶11 The district court did not abuse its discretion when it 

concluded that Boysza violated the terms of his probation and, 

consequently, revoked his probation and reinstated his prison 

sentence. Affirmed.