State v. Beloit

• Decision Date: 30 December 1992
• Docket Number: No. 19240,19240
• Citation: 844 P.2d 18,123 Idaho 36
• Parties: STATE of Idaho, Plaintiff-respondent, v. Charles A. BELOIT, Defendant-appellant. Boise, October 1992 Term
• Court: Idaho Supreme Court

Page 18

844 P.2d 18

123 Idaho 36

STATE of Idaho, Plaintiff-respondent, v. Charles A. BELOIT, Defendant-appellant.

No. 19240.

Supreme Court of Idaho,

Boise, October 1992 Term.

Dec. 30, 1992.

Clark & Feeney, Lewiston, for appellant. Paul T. Clark argued.

Larry EchoHawk, Atty. Gen., Myrna A.I. Stahman, Deputy Atty. Gen., argued, Boise, for respondent.

BAKES, Chief Justice.

Appellant Charles A. Beloit appeals from a felony conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol in violation of I.C. §§ 18-8004 and 18-8005(3). ¹ Beloit entered a conditional plea of guilty to the felony, raising essentially one issue on appeal, i.e., that two of the three prior DUI convictions used by the State in enhancing his charge from a misdemeanor to a felony were not valid convictions for purposes of the felony enhancement provisions because Beloit was not provided all of his constitutional rights under the United States or Idaho Constitution at the time of those convictions. Beloit does not contest the validity of his DUI conviction from Kootenai County, but claims on appeal that the two Nez Perce County convictions, No. 62898 in 1987 and No. 69523 in 1989, were invalid. Beloit acknowledges that if either of the two Nez Perce County convictions is valid, then his appeal in this case is without merit. We conclude that the Nez Perce County conviction in No. 69523, entered October 30, 1989, is a valid conviction in which Beloit was accorded all of his constitutional rights, and accordingly, we affirm the conviction in this case.

Prior to entering his conditional plea of guilty, Beloit filed a motion in limine seeking to prevent the admission of the two prior Nez Perce County convictions. The prosecuting attorney produced certified copies of those two judgments of conviction, together with copies of the transcript of the proceedings and a rights form signed by the defendant. In Nez Perce County Case No. 69523, Beloit did not introduce any evidence himself, but rather argued that, even though the documents introduced by the State showed that he had waived his constitutional rights, the documents did not show that he did it knowingly and intelligently.

The trial court reviewed the record carefully and denied Beloit's motion in limine, concluding that the conviction in Nez Perce County Case No. 69523, dated October 30, 1989, was a valid conviction and that Beloit had not carried his burden of raising an issue of fact regarding the validity of that conviction.

We conclude that the trial court did not err. The United States Supreme Court has held in Parke v. Raley, 506 U.S. 20, 113 S.Ct. 517, 121 L.Ed.2d 391 (1992), that once the State has made a prima facie showing of the validity of a prior conviction used to enhance a pending crime, the burden of going forward with proof that the conviction was defective because of the denial of some constitutional right may be placed upon the defendant without violating the United States Constitution. See also Burgett v. Texas, 389 U.S. 109, 88 S.Ct. 258, 19 L.Ed.2d 319 (1967). Once the defendant does raise a triable issue of fact concerning whether the defendant was accorded all of his rights, or that he did not properly waive them, the burden is then upon the State to rebut the defendant's evidence and convince the court that no violation of the defendant's rights occurred. People v. Coffey, 67 Cal.2d 204, 60 Cal.Rptr. 457, 430 P.2d 15 (1967). The Eighth Circuit, in Losieau v. Sigler, 406 F.2d 795 (8th Cir.1969), cert. den. 396 U.S. 988, 90 S.Ct. 475, 24 L.Ed.2d 452 (1969), has also held that the burden of going forward with proof concerning the violation of constitutional rights in a case being used for enhancement purposes is on the defendant:

We are inclined to believe that Burgett must be read as holding that where the record is silent as to whether an accused was furnished counsel at a critical stage and where the accused introduces evidence tending to show that he was not in fact so represented, the burden then shifts to the state to prove, by a fair preponderance of the evidence, that the accused was represented.

Id. at 803. In this case, the trial court found that the defendant Beloit had not met his burden of producing evidence that he did not knowingly and intelligently waive his rights when he entered his counseled plea of guilty to the Nez Perce County Case No. 69523, entered October 18, 1989. Accordingly, the trial court properly used that conviction, along with the uncontested Kootenai County conviction, to enter judgment against Beloit.

Beloit argues that our decision in State v. Mesenbrink, 115 Idaho 850, 771 P.2d 514 (1989), requires that any judgment of conviction, in order to qualify for enhancement purposes, must contain essentially all of the information set out in Idaho Misdemeanor Rule 5(f). However, the sole issue authoritatively resolved in Mesenbrink was that the State of Idaho did not have a right to appeal and the Court in Mesenbrink dismissed the appeal. Accordingly, that portion of the Court's opinion in Mesenbrink upon which the appellant Beloit relies was dicta, as correctly noted in the dissent of Justice Johnson in Mesenbrink.

Accordingly, we conclude that the State met its burden of establishing that Nez Perce County conviction No. 69523, entered October 30, 1989, was a valid conviction which, together with the Kootenai County conviction, was sufficient to enhance the current conviction to a felony. Therefore, we affirm the district court's judgment of conviction.

JOHNSON and McDEVITT, JJ., and SCHWARTZMAN, J. pro tem., concur.

BISTLINE, Justice, dissenting.

Today the majority concludes that the district court did not err in concluding that Beloit did not "carr[y] his burden of raising an issue of fact regarding the validity of th[e] conviction." The problem with that statement is twofold: 1) the defendant did not have such a burden and 2) the evidence presented to the district court shows that neither of the two Nez Perce County guilty pleas used to establish the offense were validly obtained. Accordingly, this Justice cannot join the majority's opinion.

I. A DEFENDANT IS NOT REQUIRED TO DISPUTE OR ATTEMPT TO DISPROVE AN ELEMENT OF THE CRIME BEFORE THE STATE IS REQUIRED TO PROVE THAT ELEMENT BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT.

It is clear and unneedful of repeating that the burden of proving any necessary element of a charged offense is always with the State and may never be shifted to the defendant. The United States Supreme Court has said that is so, and I, too, say that it is so.

Lest there remain any doubt about the constitutional stature of the reasonable-doubt standard, we explicitly hold that the Due Process Clause protects the accused against conviction except upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the crime with which he is charged.

In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 364, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 1073, 25 L.Ed.2d 368 (1970).

Parke v. Raley, 506 U.S. 20, 113 S.Ct. 517, 121 L.Ed.2d 391 (1992), cited by the majority in support of its contention that the defendant bears the burden of coming forward with evidence that the prior convictions were unconstitutional, does not hold to the contrary of Winship and is easily distinguishable from this case. Parke involved a statute which provided for the enhancement of punishment if the defendant had prior convictions. The statute only required that the state produce proof of the fact of a previous conviction.

Once this is done, a presumption of regularity attaches, and the burden shifts to the defendant to produce evidence that his rights were infringed.... If the defendant refutes the presumption of regularity, the burden shifts back to the government affirmatively to show that the underlying judgment was entered in a manner that did, in fact, protect the defendant's rights.

Parke, 506 U.S. at ----, 113 S.Ct. at 520. The Supreme Court described the "narrow question" with which it was faced as whether "due process permits Kentucky to employ its particular burden-of-proof scheme when allowing recidivism defendants to attack previous convictions as invalid under Boykin [v. Alabama, 395 U.S. 238, 89 S.Ct. 1709, 23 L.Ed.2d 274 (1969) ]." Id. at ----, 113 S.Ct. at 522. The Supreme Court held that the Kentucky's burden-shifting rule passed constitutional muster.

All of the above is very interesting but inapplicable to this case. The statute involved in the instant case changes the nature of the offense upon proof of prior convictions. This is a significant difference. As Justice Blackmun wrote in his concurring opinion in Parke:

I write separately, however, to emphasize that I agree with [the majority's] conclusion only because Kentucky's persistent-felony-offender statute [citation omitted] is a sentencing provision rather than a statute creating a separate criminal offense.

....

The Supreme Court of Kentucky has described the persistent-felony-offender statute:

"There is no additional punishment imposed by a persistent felony offender conviction, merely a more severe punishment. KRS 532.080 does not create or define a criminal offense. It recognizes a status and, in a proceeding separate and apart from the initial trial, fixes a penalty which is to be imposed rather than the one fixed by the jury on the initial trial." Hardin v. Commonwealth, 573 S.W.2d 657, 661 (Ky.1978).

....

I believe that had Kentucky chosen to make being a persistent-felony offender a separate crime ... the Commonwealth would have had the burden affirmatively to prove that the underlying felony convictions were obtained by constitutional means. Under those circumstances, Boykin would not permit the Commonwealth to rely upon a silent record.

506 U.S. at ----, 113 S.Ct. at 528.

Beloit's case is exactly the situation to which Justice Blackmun refers. The felony D.U.I. statute is not a sentencing provision, as was the Kentucky provision. Rather it creates and defines a separate crime. The properly proved...