State v. Hogue

• Court: Utah Court of Appeals
• Writing for the Court: CHRISTIANSEN FORSTER, Judge
• Citation: 572 P.3d 1147,2025 UT App 88
• Docket Number: 20220544-CA
• Decision Date: 12 June 2025
• Parties: STATE of Utah, Appellee, v. Glen HOGUE, Appellant.

572 P.3d 1147

2025 UT App 88

STATE of Utah, Appellee,

v.Glen HOGUE, Appellant.

No. 20220544-CA

Court of Appeals of Utah.

Filed June 12, 2025

Third District Court, Salt Lake Department, The Honorable Richard D. McKelvie, No. 211903653

Randall W. Richards, Clearfield, Attorney for Appellant

Derek E. Brown and Daniel W. Boyer, Attorneys for Appellee

Judge Michele M. Christiansen Forster authored this Opinion, in which Judges David N. Mortensen and Ryan M. Harris concurred.

Opinion

CHRISTIANSEN FORSTER, Judge:

¶1 Glen Hogue challenges his convictions of manslaughter and felony discharge of a firearm. He raises arguments of insufficient evidence, prosecutorial misconduct, and ineffective assistance of trial counsel. We see no error related to the various issues raised by Hogue, and we therefore affirm.

BACKGROUND

¶2 One evening in March 2021, Hogue and his friend Troy were hanging out together in Hogue’s RV that was parked outside his house. The two smoked marijuana and drank whiskey together. At some point, Troy tried to show Hogue his gun that he had brought over. The two men fumbled with the gun and accidentally fired one shot into the floor of the RV. Hogue was angry with Troy and began berating him for bringing the gun inside and yelling at him to sit down.

¶3 Another of Hogue’s friends (Friend), who had been living in the RV during this period of time, was outside in his truck waiting for Troy to leave when he heard the gunshot. He approached the RV and could see Hogue and Troy yelling at each other. The two men exited the RV, still arguing, with Hogue holding the gun. Friend told Troy to leave, but Troy refused to leave without his gun. Troy also said he had two more guns in his truck and tried to get in his truck, but Hogue “shut the truck door.” After “a couple of minutes arguing,” the two men “appeared to calm down” and “went back inside the RV.” Friend returned to his trick because he “did not want to be a part of it.”

¶4 Back inside, Hogue, who still had Troy’s gun, removed the gun magazine, which held three bullets, and removed an additional bullet from the chamber. He immediately thought that Troy “brought just exactly four bullets” because he intended to use them on Hogue, his girlfriend, his dog, and Friend. Hogue concluded that Troy “came to shoot.”

¶5 While repeatedly apologizing, Troy asked Hogue to give him his gun back so he could leave. Hogue refused to return the gun, and he also took away Troy’s truck keys. Hogue was afraid that Troy “was going to go down the street, come back and start shooting up the place.” Hogue told Troy he would get him an Uber ride home and that he could come back the next day for his truck and gun.

¶6 During this period of time, Troy was sometimes “calm” and sometimes “really agitated and angry,” even becoming “really belligerent at one point.” Sometime during this time frame, Hogue decided to “reload[] the gun.” Troy angrily told Hogue, “Hey, just give me the gun and I’m going to leave.” In response, Hogue “pointed [the gun] right at [Troy] and told him to sit down again at gunpoint with the bullet [in] the chamber.”

¶7 Troy ultimately agreed to take an Uber ride home and moved toward the door to go outside and wait for the ride; Hogue moved to follow him out. Troy then reportedly “spun around and attacked” Hogue. In the attack, Hogue “pulled the trigger and shot [Troy] in the chest.” This initial shot resulted in a “very devastating injury,” tearing through “all of the great vessels of the heart”—an injury that would have left Troy “unresponsive within 30 seconds” and dead within minutes. However, Hogue claims that after Troy was shot, Troy came at him a second time, at which point the gun went off again and Troy fell to the floor. This time the bullet hit Troy in the cheek and exited the back of the neck—a “soft tissue injury” that did not impact bone or “any major vessels.” Both bullet wounds were later described by the medical examiner as lacking the features typically present with a close-range or intermediate-range shooting, which “suggested]” that “the gun was at least … two [feet] from where the entrance wound was”; however, the medical examiner was not able to definitively “rul[e] out” closer-range shots.

¶8 Friend heard the gunshots and came running. He found Hogue standing near Troy, who was on the floor of the RV and “breathing the death rattle.” Hogue told Friend, “He made a run at me and I had to do it.” But Friend later expressed confusion as to why Hogue would have felt a need to shoot Troy: “I don’t get it. [Hogue] could have slapped [Troy] down so easy”—an apparent reference to the size disparity between the men, Hogue being 5’11” and Troy being 5’3”.

¶9 Hogue left the RV and went into his house to call 911. He told his girlfriend, who had been in the house sleeping, “Call 911. We need an ambulance now.” And when his girlfriend asked what was wrong, Hogue responded, “I shot Troy. He’s hit.” Hogue’s girlfriend called 911 and gave some initial information to the operator, and Hogue then took the phone and proceeded to give the operator additional information. Hogue told the operator that Troy had “tried to strike” him and explained, “I had to shoot him…. He was attacking me.”

¶10 Hogue made similar statements to the police when officers arrived on the scene. To the first officer he encountered, Hogue stated, “He attacked me so I shot him.” Then to another officer who asked what happened, Hogue simply said, “He attacked me.” He elaborated, “I shot him in the chest and he was attacking me.” The officer asked, “You killed him?” And Hogue replied, “Yes, I did.”

¶11 When the paramedics on scene talked to Hogue and inquired as to whether he was hurt and whether he needed medical attention, he responded in the negative. Consistent with this self-assessment, pictures taken by police that night show no recent injuries on Hogue’s head, arms, or hands. And the only blood discovered on Hogue or his clothing was a few drops on the top of one shoe.

¶12 Upon eventually arriving at the police station later that night, Hogue stated, “[J]ust letting you know I didn’t do anything wrong, I’m defending myself and my girl and my house and everything.” But shortly thereafter, he started to suggest that the gun had accidentally discharged as Troy had been attacking him:

[H]e freaking hit me.. swinging at me.

The gun went off …. Because I was trying to stand up after he hit me the first time …. I was looking at him, he was standing back and he comes at me again, went off again.

I don’t know if I hit him. I think I hit him in the chest the first time. I wasn’t aiming at him, just trying to stand up.

Don’t know where the second round went because he hit me, just fucking defend[ing] myself. I didn’t do anything wrong….

Hope he’s okay. I know I hit him because he was right on top of me. He stepped back a couple of steps and he came at me again.

¶13 When Hogue was interviewed by a detective later that night, he repeated much the same story. He explained that as Troy “came at” him, he “pulled the trigger”—“[n]ot consciously thinking of shooting [Troy] or anything.” Hogue reported that he “stood up like [he] was going to.. defend [him]self,” that Troy “backed up for a minute” and then “came at [him] again,” and that the gun “went off’ once more.

¶14 The State charged Hogue with murder and with felony discharge of a firearm. At trial, the State supported its case with testimony from Friend, several involved law enforcement professionals, and the medical examiner. The State also presented numerous exhibits, including body camera recordings from officers that responded on the night of the shooting, the video recording of Hogue’s interview at the police station, the audio recording of the 911 call, and audio recordings of several phone calls Hogue had made from jail. The defense, for its part, argued that Hogue had acted in self-defense and was therefore legally justified in shooting Troy.

¶15 After the presentation of evidence, Hogue moved for a directed verdict, arguing that “the State could not overcome the burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that [Hogue] did not act reasonably in self-defense.” The trial court denied the motion. The jury was thereafter given instructions setting forth the elements for the charged crimes of murder and felony discharge of a firearm, additional instructions addressing the lesser included offenses of manslaughter and negligent homicide, as well as instructions addressing the affirmative defenses of perfect self-defense and imperfect self-defense.

¶16 The jury found Hogue guilty of both murder and felony discharge of a firearm. However, because the jury also determined that the State had not disproven the applicability of imperfect self-defense, the jury’s murder verdict resulted in the trial court entering a conviction for the reduced charge of manslaughter. Hogue was thereafter sentenced to concurrently running prison terms.

ISSUES AND STANDARDS OF REVIEW

[1, 2] ¶17 First, Hogue argues that the State presented insufficient evidence at trial to support his convictions. “In assessing a claim of insufficiency of the evidence, we review the evidence and all inferences which may reasonably be drawn from it in the light most favorable to the verdict of the jury.” State v. Gilliard, 2020 UT App 7, ¶ 15, 457 P.3d 1128 (quotation simplified), cert. denied, 466 P.3d 1076 (Utah 2020). “And we will not reverse a jury verdict if we conclude that some evidence exists from which a reasonable jury could find that the elements of the crime had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.” Id. (quotation simplified).

[3, 4] ¶18 Next, Hogue raises claims of prosecutorial misconduct. But prosecutorial misconduct is not “a standalone basis for independent judicial review.” State v. Humnel, 2017 UT 19, ¶ 111, 393 P.3d 314. Rather, “when an appellant alleges prosecutorial misconduct, we review the trial court’s ruling regarding the challenged conduct,” State v. Henfling, 2020...