Court Opinion

ID: 9784371
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 20:43:17.790958+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:35:53.686818
License: Public Domain

ORME, Judge
(concurring in the result in part):
129 I concur in the court's opinion, except that part of it which concludes there was insufficient evidence to sustain the conviction for "attempted escape."1 I do concur in vacating the attempted escape conviction, but only because defendant's clever scheme, while punishable under other statutes, simply does not, as a legal matter, constitute an attempt to escape.2 I do not see it as a question of the sufficiency of evidence.
130 On the contrary, the State amassed considerable evidence in support of its legal theory that in perpetrating a fraud on Slaugh's brother and the bail bondsman, Silva was also guilty of attempted escape. I see no gaps in the State's factual presentation; I see only a gap in its legal theory. Had Silva's ruse succeeded, he would have been, so far as the criminal justice system is concerned, properly released from jail. The bond posted by the bail bondsman would stand as security for his court appearance and Slaugh's brother's house would have made the bondsman whole had Silva jumped bail.
[31 While clever, the seam Silva tried to pull was wrong. However, it could properly be addressed not only by a civil action for fraud at the brother's instance but also by bringing felony communications fraud charges, as was successfully done in this case. -In sum, I think the majority's insufficiency of evidence focus is wide of the mark, *612as there is simply no quantum of evidence the State could have presented in support of its theory that would have enabled us to sustain the conviction. In such a case, and regardless of how Silva phrased his argument, it seems conceptually sounder to recognize that Silva's misdeed does not legally constitute attempted escape than to speak in terms of the sufficiency of evidence.3

. I do think the central role of Silva's distinctive New England accent bears emphasis. The reliability of the voice identification testimony would at least be more problematic if this same case arose in, say, the Suffolk County Jail in Boston, Massachusetts.

. "A prisoner is guilty of escape if he leaves official custody without authorization." Utah Code Ann. § 76-8-309(1) (1999). A prisoner released on bail obviously leaves custody with authorization.

. I think it is significant that the majority identifies no particular evidentiary »shortfall in the State's presentation. Similarly, the majority points to no additional evidence it would have the State adduce to support its theory that what Silva did constituted an escape attempt, in order to survive a sufficiency-of-the-evidence challenge.