Court Opinion

ID: 9787515
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 00:18:29.73706+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:56.861015
License: Public Domain

ORME, Judge
(concurring):
¶ 18 I concur in the court’s opinion. I write separately to explain my position, because I recognize the lead opinion represents a departure from the general prohibition against raising issues for the first time on appeal, especially in the face of a guilty plea.
¶ 19 For me, the easy proposition is this: Subject matter jurisdiction is an issue that may be raised by either party or the court at any time. So far as I am aware, there is no exception to this rule for guilty pleas. See *741James v. Galetka, 965 P.2d 567, 570 (Utah Ct.App.1998) (“[Subject matter jurisdiction] is derived from the law. It can neither be waived nor conferred by consent of the accused. Objection to the jurisdiction of the court over the subject matter may be urged at any stage of the proceedings, and the right to make such an objection is never waived.”) (internal quotations & citation omitted), cert. denied, 982 P.2d 88 (Utah 1999).
¶ 20 In this sense, the lead opinion’s analogy to sovereign immunity cases is actually pretty good. If a plaintiff sued the State without giving the required presuit notice, and the State did not raise the lack of notice as a defense below, it would presumably not be permitted to raise the lack of notice for the first time on appeal in challenging a judgment that had been entered against it. However, if giving the presuit notice is necessary to vest the court with subject matter jurisdiction, then of course the lack of notice could be raised for the first time on appeal. And indeed, giving presuit notice strictly in compliance with the sovereign immunity statute has been held to be a matter of subject matter jurisdiction. See, e.g., Greene v. Utah Transit Auth., 2001 UT 109,¶ 16, 37 P.3d 1156.
¶ 21 While this kind of subject matter jurisdiction issue usually arises in civil cases, the concept is the same in criminal cases. If a guilty plea is entered, and no issues are reserved for appeal consistent with State v. Sery, 758 P.2d 935, 939 (Utah Ct.App.1988), then unless the guilty plea is set aside as involuntary, all issues are waived on appeal, except subject matter jurisdiction, which can never be waived. See James, 965 P.2d at 570. Thus, if a 32-year-old defendant was charged with murder in juvenile court and pled guilty, on appeal to this court he most certainly could challenge the lack of the juvenile court’s subject matter jurisdiction over an adult charged with murder, see Utah Code Ann. §§ 78-3a-104, -105 (Supp.2003)— even if the guilty plea was otherwise proper and he never raised the jurisdictional problem below. The same is true if a defendant pled guilty to the “crime” of blasphemy, and no such criminal offense were on the books in Utah. If he pled guilty, and did not raise below the point that no such crime existed in Utah, he still could challenge his conviction by raising, albeit for the first time on appeal, the lack of subject matter jurisdiction. And obviously he would succeed. The trial court simply would lack the judicial power to convict the defendant of a nonexistent crime.
¶ 22 Here is where it gets admittedly more tricky: Suppose our criminal code made it a felony to commit the crime of blasphemy, defined as “disparaging the one Almighty God or questioning His existence.” If a defendant pled guilty to that offense, did not preserve a constitutional challenge for appeal under Sery, and did not raise the constitutionality issue below, could he raise for the first time on appeal the facial unconstitutionality, under the First Amendment, of the statute criminalizing blasphemy? At one level, it seems that charges brought pursuant to such a statute would be just as much a nullity as charges brought, as in the immediately preceding hypothetical, in the complete absence of any blasphemy statute. In simplest terms, in this country there simply could be no crime of blasphemy — any statute purporting to provide otherwise would be facially unconstitutional. But he could not raise this constitutional challenge for the first time on appeal unless facial unconstitutionality goes to subject matter jurisdiction.1 Does it? I am not completely sure, although I can see that, in concept, an unconstitutional statute is as ineffectual as no statute.
*742¶ 23 This is what ultimately explains my vote in this case: No Utah appellate court has squarely answered the question of whether a challenge to a criminal statute based on facial unconstitutionality goes to subject matter jurisdiction. The lead opinion cites a multitude of cases that have held it does; Judge Bench’s opinion cites no case that has addressed the question and held it does not.2 It is admittedly somewhat coun-terintuitive for me that a substantive conclusion of unconstitutionality — even facial unconstitutionality — defeats subject matter jurisdiction, but that seems to be the prevailing view. Accordingly, with some trepidation, I concur in the court’s opinion.

. Judge Bench points out such an argument could be reached under the plain error doctrine. Maybe. But the rescue opportunity provided by the plain error doctrine is rather limited. As hereafter shown, the ability to claim plain error can itself be waived. In contrast, subject matter jurisdiction can never be waived. In the blasphemy hypothetical, if facial unconstitutionality is a matter of subject matter jurisdiction, it could be addressed for the first time on appeal even if plain error was not raised, see State v. All Real Property, 2004 UT App 232,¶ 13 n. 7; was inadequately raised, see State v. Dunn, 850 P.2d 1201, 1208-09 (Utah 1993) (holding that if any of the requirements for plain error are not met, "plain error is not established” and cannot be raised); or was raised too late. See Coleman v. Stevens, 2000 UT 98,¶ 9, 17 P.3d 1122 (holding court would not reach unpreserved issues under plain error doctrine because plain error raised for first time in reply brief).

. I disagree with Judge Bench’s claim that Myers v. State, 2004 UT 31, 94 P.3d 211, considered this question and rejected it on the merits. The Myers court described the jurisdictional argument asserted in the case as being "somewhat convoluted.” Id. at ¶ 15. Later, the Court characterized the argument as being tantamount to a “claimj ] that the trial court’s decision constituted an 'erroneous application of the law.’ ” Id. at ¶ 17 (citation omitted). In any event, the Court's dismissal of the jurisdictional argument in Myers was premised on the simplistic notion that " '[a] court has subject matter jurisdiction if the case is one of the type of cases the court has been empowered to entertain by the constitution or statute from which the court derives its authority,’ ” id. at ¶ 16 (citation omitted) — an obvious overstatement as readily shown by the sovereign immunity example, i.e., district courts have general civil jurisdiction and even jurisdiction over disputes against the State, but lack subject matter jurisdiction over such a case if the presuit notice is flawed in some way. Another example of the overbreadth of the pronouncement in Myers is the fact that appellate courts have the constitutional and statutory power to consider appeals, and yet are held to lack subject matter jurisdiction over appeals that are untimely. See Utah Const, art. VIII § 3 ("The Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction over all other matters to be exercised as provided by statute ....”); id. § 5 ("The jurisdiction of all other courts, both original and appellate, shall be provided by statute.”); Utah Code Ann. § 78-2-2(3) (2002) (specifying Supreme Court’s appellate jurisdiction); id. § 78-2a-3(2) (specifying appellate jurisdiction of Court of Appeals); Varian-Eimac, Inc. v. Lamoreaux, 767 P.2d 569, 571 (Utah Ct.App.1989) ("[Fjailure to file an appeal within the required time limit deprived the court of subject matter jurisdiction.”) (citing Watson v. Anderson, 29 Utah 2d 36, 504 P.2d 1003, 1004 (1973)).
The very best indication that the Myers court simply did not have before it the issue we must decide — at least not in any kind of cogent, well-developed way — is that the only authority cited in Myers is two decisions from the Utah Court of Appeals and the statute giving the district courts original jurisdiction of "all matters civil and criminal,” subject to certain limitations. Myers, 2004 UT 31 at ¶ 16, 94 P.3d 211 (quoting Utah Code Ann. § 78-3-4(1) (2002)). The Myers opinion did not acknowledge, much less did it treat, the extensive state and federal jurisprudence categorizing the facial unconstitutionality of a criminal statute as being a matter of subject matter jurisdiction — a virtual impossibility if the argument had actually been made and was well-supported, as in the instant case.