Opinion ID: 866606
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: denial of the motion to amend the charge

Text: ¶8 Mr. Mateos-Martinez suggests that the prosecution’s decision to charge him with aggravated murder and the district court’s denial of his motion to reduce the charge from aggravated murder to murder violated his constitutional rights. First, he argues that the charging decision violated both the Uniform Operation of Laws Clause of article I, section 24 of the Utah Constitution and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.2 Second, he argues that the aggravated murder statute unconstitutionally affords prosecutors unbridled discretion to charge persons in his situation with aggravated murder. A. Decision to Charge Mr. Mateos-Martinez with Aggravated Murder ¶9 “All laws of a general nature shall have uniform operation.” UTAH CONST. art. I, § 24. To determine whether a statute meets this requirement, we apply a three-part test. We ask “(1) whether the statute creates any classifications; (2) whether the classifications impose any disparate treatment on persons similarly situated; and (3) if there is disparate treatment, whether the legislature had any reasonable objective that warrants the disparity.” State v. Robinson, 2011 UT 30, ¶ 17, 254 P.3d 183 (internal quotation marks omitted). ¶10 Mr. Mateos-Martinez argues that the decision to charge him with aggravated murder was “a case of over-prosecution against people in his class.” To support this argument, he offers a list of eight other criminal defendants represented by the Salt Lake City Legal Defender Assocation. These defendants were apparently all charged with both murder and aggravated robbery, but in their cases the aggravated robbery charges were not used to increase the charge of murder to aggravated murder, as was done in Mr. MateosMartinez’s case. ¶11 He concedes that this list is not “a complete record of all relevant prosecutions in the state.” We need not determine whether it is even a representative record, however, because on its face the list fails to provide sufficient information about these other defendants for us to determine whether they are “persons similarly situated” to Mr. Mateos-Martinez—a requirement for any claim that the uniform 2 “Since our analysis under the uniform operation of laws provision is at least as rigorous as it would be under the federal equal protection provision, we accordingly limit our review to [the] state constitutional claim.”ABCO Enters. v. Utah State Tax Comm’n, 2009 UT 36, ¶ 14, 211 P.3d 382 (internal quotation marks omitted). 3 STATE v. MATEOS-MARTINEZ Opinion of the Court operation of laws clause has been violated. The list provides only the names, case numbers, and races of the other defendants. We cannot tell whether they were charged, as was Mr. Mateos-Martinez, with multiple counts of aggravated robbery and with multiple other aggravated felonies. Further, we know nothing about the circumstances surrounding their crimes, and cannot determine their relative culpability, or discern what other factors may have informed the prosecutorial decision not to charge them with aggravated murder. ¶12 For example, one of the other listed defendants, Jesus Jimenez, was recently the subject of an appeal to this court. He was, it so happens, Mr. Mateos-Martinez’s getaway driver. See supra ¶ 2 n.1. Because he was only an accomplice to another’s crimes, he is not “similarly situated” to Mr. Mateos-Martinez. The other listed defendants may be similarly distinguishable. It is Mr. MateosMartinez’s burden to show that they are not. “[A] reviewing court is not simply a depository in which [a] party may dump the burden of argument and research . . . .” Broderick v. Apartment Mgmt. Consultants, L.L.C., 2012 UT 17, ¶ 9, 279 P.3d 391 (second alteration in original) (internal quotation marks omitted). Mr. Mateos-Martinez has not shown that the decision to charge him with aggravated murder “impose[d] any disparate treatment” on him, Robinson, 2011 UT 30, ¶ 17. He therefore cannot show that the charging decision violated the Uniform Operation of Laws Clause. For the same reason, he has not shown a violation of the federal Constitution. See supra ¶ 8 n.2. B. Aggravated Murder Statute ¶13 Mr. Mateos-Martinez argues in the alternative that the aggravated murder statute is unconstitutional on its face because it “offers prosecutors . . . unbridled discretion to choose arbitrarily whether to file charges as aggravated murder (carrying as penalties capital punishment and life without parole) or as murder (carrying lower penalties).” ¶14 Section 76-5-202(1) of the Utah Code provides that “[c]riminal homicide constitutes aggravated murder if the actor intentionally or knowingly causes the death of another [and] . . . the homicide was committed incident to an act, scheme, course of conduct, or criminal episode during which the actor committed or attempted to commit aggravated robbery.” Citing State v. Mohi, 901 P.2d 991 (Utah 1995), Mr. Mateos-Martinez argues that this statute violates the Uniform Operation of Laws Clause because it does not 4 Cite as: 2013 UT 23 Opinion of the Court constrain the prosecution’s discretion to charge a defendant with aggravated murder. ¶15 In Mohi, this court held that certain provisions of the Juvenile Courts Act violated that clause because it “permit[ted] two identically situated juveniles . . . to face radically different penalties and consequences without any statutory guidelines for distinguishing between them.” Id. at 998. The provisions gave prosecutors “direct-file” authority, under which “prosecutors [had] discretion to file some charges against juveniles directly in adult circuit or district court while leaving other similarly accused offenders in juvenile court.” Id. at 994. Upon determining that there was “no rational connection between the legislature’s objective of balancing the needs of children with public protection and its decision to allow prosecutors total discretion in deciding which members of a potential class of juvenile offenders to single out for adult treatment,” id. at 1002, we held the provisions unconstitutional, id. at 1004. ¶16 Mohi is distinguishable from the instant case. Indeed, Mohi explicitly distinguishes itself from the facts before us: The type of discretion incorporated in the [Juvenile Courts] Act is unlike traditional prosecutor discretion. Selecting a charge to fit the circumstances of a defendant and his or her alleged acts is a necessary step in the chain of any prosecution. It requires a legal determination on the part of the prosecutor as to which elements of an offense can likely be proved at trial. Moreover, such discretion is also beneficial to the public; it allows prosecutors to plea-bargain with offenders in some cases, saving the public the expense of criminal prosecutions. However, none of these benefits accompany the discretion to choose which juveniles to prosecute in adult rather than in juvenile court. The elements of the offense are determined by the charging decision, and it is only the charging decision that is protected by traditional notions of prosecutor discretion. Id. at 1002–03 (second emphasis added). ¶17 In our case, prosecutors exercised such “traditional prosecutor discretion” in choosing to charge Mr. Mateos-Martinez with aggravated murder. He committed murder in the course of multiple aggravated felonies against multiple victims, including 5 STATE v. MATEOS-MARTINEZ Opinion of the Court children. The decision to charge aggravated murder under such circumstances is a classic exercise of prosecutorial discretion, and we will not second-guess such a decision on the showing made before us today. Similarly, we are not persuaded that the aggravated murder statute is unconstitutional. Mohi held that to provide prosecutors with unguided discretion to file the same charge against a juvenile defendant in either juvenile or adult court violated the uniform operation of laws clause. But aggravated murder is a different crime than murder, with an additional element that must be proved at trial. We reject Mr. Mateos-Martinez’s argument, and affirm the district court’s denial of his motion to amend the charge.