State v. Earl

• Decision Date: 27 January 2015
• Docket Number: No. 20120991.,20120991.
• Citation: 345 P.3d 1153,2015 UT 12
• Parties: STATE of Utah, Appellee, v. Tara EARL, Appellant.
• Court: Utah Supreme Court

345 P.3d 1153

2015 UT 12

STATE of Utah, Appellee

v.Tara EARL, Appellant.

No. 20120991.

Supreme Court of Utah.

Jan. 27, 2015.

Jeff Buhman, Dianne R. Orcutt, D. Adam Miller, Salt Lake City, for appellee.

Sean P. Hullinger, Lehi, for appellant.

Justice LEE authored the opinion of the Court, in which Chief Justice DURRANT, Associate Chief Justice NEHRING, Justice DURHAM, and Justice PARRISH joined.

Opinion

Justice LEE, opinion of the Court:

¶ 1 This is a consolidated interlocutory appeal in two pending criminal cases against Tara Earl. In these cases and in several related ones, we consider the applicability of legislative amendments to the Indigent Defense Act (IDA), Utah Code sections 77–32–101 through –704. The amended provisions override this court's construction of the prior version of the statute in State v. Parduhn, 2011 UT 55, ¶¶ 23–30, 283 P.3d 488, by foreclosing an indigent defendant in a criminal action from retaining private counsel while requesting public defense resources from the government. See Utah Code § 77–32–303(2). They do so by generally conditioning an indigent defendant's eligibility for such resources on the retention of publicly funded counsel. Id.

¶ 2 The question in these and related cases¹ is the applicability of these amendments to certain cases filed or pending around the time the statute became effective (May 8, 2012). In the two criminal cases against Earl, two district court judges denied her requests for government-funded defense resources. We affirm. First, we identify the conduct being regulated by the IDA—the exercise of a mature right to indigent defense resources. Second, because the law in effect at the time that Earl exercised that right was the amended version of the IDA, we affirm the district court's decision denying Earl's motion. And finally, we reject Earl's constitutional and statutory challenges to the application of the IDA amendments to her case.

I

¶ 3 Earl stands charged with Unlawful Sexual Conduct involving a 16– or 17–year–old, a third-degree felony, in both the Third District Court and Fourth District Court. The criminal information in the Fourth District case was filed on November 21, 2011. In the Third District case, the information was filed on March 26, 2012.

¶ 4 At all relevant times, Earl has been represented by private counsel. She eventually filed an affidavit of indigency, however, which was accepted by both district courts. And she filed motions for government-funded defense resources in both cases. The Fourth District motion was filed on May 8, 2012. The Third District motion was filed on November 29, 2012.

¶ 5 In support of her motions, Earl asserted that the pre-amendment version of the IDA applied to her case because it was in effect at the time she was charged, and because the IDA amendments diminished her substantive right to counsel and thus cannot be applied retroactively. She also argued that by depriving her of state funding for her private counsel of choice, the amended IDA violated her constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel, due process, equal protection, and uniform operation laws. The State countered that the amended IDA applied because it had taken effect by the time Earl filed her motions for defense resources, and that in any case the amendments were procedural and thus retroactively applicable to cases already pending at the time they went into effect.

¶ 6 In addition to arguing in support of a vested right under the unamended version of the IDA, Earl also advanced separate challenges to the legality of the denial of her request for funding even under the amended statute. In the Fourth District, Earl asserted that Utah County's contract with its defense services provider did not comply with the notice and public bidding requirements set forth in the Utah Procurement Act, Utah Code Title 63G, Chapter 6a. And in the Third District, Earl challenged the constitutionality of the provision of the amended IDA conditioning an indigent defendant's eligibility for such resources on the retention of publicly funded counsel.

¶ 7 Both district courts denied Earl's motions and rejected her alternative challenges to the legality of the denial of her requests under the amended IDA. In denying the motion in the Fourth District, Judge Hansen concluded that application of the amended IDA did not amount to the “retroactive” application of law to events completed before its enactment. Thus, Judge Hansen suggested that the law did not “ ‘attach[ ] new legal consequences to events completed before its enactment,’ ” but instead merely applied prospectively to Earl's request for public funding, which was filed after the law went into effect. And on that basis Judge Hansen held that Earl's motion was “subject to the new statute as it was the governing law at the time of the request,” while suggesting in the alternative that the statute was “procedural and may thus be applied retroactively.”

¶ 8 Judge Hansen also rejected Earl's assertion that “the limitations of the new statute [did] not apply in this case because Utah County ha[d] not contracted with a defense service provider” in a manner in compliance with the public notice and bidding requirements of the state procurement statute, Utah Code sections 63G–6a–406, 602. The basis of his holding on this point was the conclusion that even if the Public Defender's Association could not qualify as a “defense services provider” under Utah Code section 77–32–201(4), the county had satisfied the statute in an alternative manner, by establishing a “county legal defender's office” under Utah Code section 77–32–302(2)(a).

¶ 9 The Third District also denied Earl's motion. Judge Bernards–Goodman concluded that the 2012 amendments to the IDA “constitute a procedure change” to the law and therefore governed Earl's motion. And she also rejected Earl's constitutional challenge to the amended IDA, holding that her “rights under the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and Article I, Section 12 of the Utah State Constitution are not violated by application of the current version of the Indigent Defense Act.”

¶ 10 Earl filed petitions for interlocutory appeal, which were granted. We review the district courts' decisions de novo, according no deference to their legal determinations of which version of the IDA applies to Earl's motions, or to their analysis of the grounds for challenging the legality of the provision of the amended IDA conditioning funding for defense resources on the retention of publicly funded counsel. See Vorher v. Henriod, 2013 UT 10, ¶ 6, 297 P.3d 614 (stating that the applicability of a statute is a matter of statutory interpretation, and thus a question of law, which we review de novo).

II

¶ 11 Earl challenges the district courts' decisions denying her motions for funding of defense resources under the amended version of the IDA and also asserts alternative legal challenges to the application of the 2012 amendments in this case. First, she asserts that she acquired a “vested” right to proceed under the “law in effect at the time of [her] underlying primary conduct,” meaning “the conduct giving rise to [the] criminal charge[s]” against her. Second, even assuming that the amended IDA applies, Earl challenges the operative provision of the amended statute on various constitutional grounds. And finally, echoing points raised in the Fourth District proceeding below, Earl asserts that the counties failed to follow notice and public bidding requirements in the state procurement statute in establishing a “defense services provider” under Utah Code section 77–32–202(4). We reject all three arguments and affirm.

A

¶ 12 Earl's first argument fails for reasons identified by Judge Hansen in the Fourth District decision before us on this appeal. As Judge Hansen noted, the rule against retroactivity proscribes the retroactive application of a newly enacted statute “in a case arising from conduct antedating the statute's enactment” in a manner that “upsets expectations based in prior law.” Landgraf v. USI Film Prods., 511 U.S. 244, 269, 114 S.Ct. 1483, 128 L.Ed.2d 229 (1994). And that principle is implicated where “the new provision attaches new legal consequences to events completed before its enactment.” Id. at 270, 114 S.Ct. 1483.

¶ 13 We agree with Judge Hansen that this principle is not implicated here because the IDA amendments do not attach new legal consequences to the activity giving rise to the criminal charges against Earl. And we affirm the decisions in both of the consolidated cases before us because, as Judge Hansen put it, Earl “asked the court for public funding on her case after the new statute became effective,” and her “request is subject to the new statute as it was the governing law at the time of the request.”

¶ 14 This analysis is consistent with a clarification we offered in in State v. Clark, 2011 UT 23, ¶ 13, 251 P.3d 829. There we noted that the line between substance and procedure is not ultimately an exception to the rule against retroactivity but a tool for identifying the relevant “event” being regulated by the law in question:

Thus, if a law regulates a breach of contract or a tort, we apply the law as it exists when the alleged breach or tort occurs—i.e., the law that exists at the time of the event giving rise to a cause of action. Subsequent changes to contract or tort law are irrelevant. Similarly, if the law regulates a motion to intervene, we apply the law as it exists at the time the motion is filed. A change in the procedural rule would not apply retroactively to prior motions to intervene. We would not expel a party for failure to conform to a newly amended intervention rule in her prior motions.

Id.

¶ 15 This framework dictates an affirmance of the district courts' decisions in the cases before us on appeal. The key question is the identification of the relevant “event” being regulated by the law in question. And here that event is the assertion of a mature request for...