Court Opinion

ID: 9539161
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:47:37.251543+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:58:28.619849
License: Public Domain

GREENWOOD, Judge
(concurring in result):
I fully concur in the majority opinion’s reasoning and result. However, I believe we should address the possible impact of our ruling on pending cases by declaring that the rule announced in this opinion, barring any further prosecution after a proper Sery plea, will have prospective impact only. The majority, for the first time, explicitly holds that in Sery plea cases, there can be no further prosecution if the defendant is successful on appeal. While earlier cases had perhaps hinted or implied such a rule, it was not definitively announced until now. Therefore, it is possible that cases are currently pending in the trial courts after successful Sery appeals by criminal defendants, where the State has chosen to proceed with a prosecution based on the evidence remaining viable after the appellate decision.
A similar issue was addressed in State v. Hoff, 814 P.2d 1119 (Utah 1991). In Hoff, our supreme court addressed whether the requirement of strict compliance with Rule 11 of the Utah Rules of Criminal Procedure announced in State v. Gibbons, 740 P.2d 1309 (Utah 1987), should have retroactive *1031application. The court noted that “[w]hen a new rule of criminal procedure constitutes a clear break with the past, it is not generally applied retroactively.” Hoff, 814 P.2d at 1123. Because the Gibbons decision “was indeed intended to change both the practice and the standard for taking guilty pleas,” id., the court held that it would not be applied retroactively to guilty pleas taken before Gibbons was issued. Id. at 1124.
The majority opinion in this case states that
it is incumbent upon a trial court, in allowing a defendant to enter a guilty plea conditioned on his or her right to appeal a certain issue, to make sure the record clearly establishes that resolution of the issue on appeal, one way or another, will necessarily end the prosecution of the case.
While this statement is ostensibly based on language in Sery, it establishes a required procedure for the taking of Sery pleas which we have no reason to believe has been followed up to now. For this reason I regard the rule made in this opinion as a sufficient break with the past to fit into the category of criminal procedure rules that are not applied retroactively.
Principles of judicial economy favor resolution of the issue of retroactive application at this time, rather than waiting for the further appeal that was necessitated by the Gibbons opinion. Therefore, I would hold that the majority opinion’s requirement that a valid Sery plea precludes further prosecution after appeal, would not have retroactive application.