State v. Mace

Decision Date26 July 1996
Docket NumberNo. 930509,930509
Citation921 P.2d 1372
PartiesSTATE of Utah, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. Aaron G. MACE, Defendant and Appellant.
CourtUtah Supreme Court

Jan Graham, Att'y Gen., Frederic J. Voros, Jr., Asst. Att'y Gen., James M. Cope, Salt Lake City, for plaintiff.

Joseph C. Fratto, Jr., Salt Lake City, for defendant.

ZIMMERMAN, Chief Justice:

Aaron G. Mace appeals his conviction and sentence for rape and aggravated robbery, both first degree felonies. Mace contends that Utah's insanity defense, as codified in section 76-2-305 and in other related sections of the Utah Code, violates state and federal constitutional prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment. We reject Mace's contentions and affirm his conviction and sentence.

On December 2, 1992, Mace knocked on the door of a woman's apartment to tell her that someone was tampering with her car. After entering the apartment, Mace began to tell the woman about car alarms and then asked to use her bathroom. After about ten minutes, Mace came out of the bathroom wearing rubber gloves and holding a knife and a roll of duct tape. He threatened the woman with the knife and tied her hands behind her back with the tape. He then took the woman into her bedroom and raped her. After the rape, Mace forced the woman into her car at knife point and then drove her to her bank to have her withdraw $100 for him. The victim sped off in her car after Mace left the car to make a phone call. Mace confessed to police on the following day. He was subsequently charged with four first degree felonies: rape, aggravated sexual assault, aggravated kidnaping, and aggravated robbery.

On January 27, 1993, Mace filed a notice of his intent to rely on a defense of diminished capacity or insanity, pursuant to section 77-14-3 of the Utah Code. On June 7, 1993, he entered a plea of not guilty on each of the four counts. One week later, he moved to amend his plea to "not guilty or in the alternative not guilty by reason of insanity" and filed a lengthy motion challenging, on due process and cruel and unusual punishment grounds, the constitutionality of the statutory scheme codifying Utah's insanity defense.

At a hearing on the motions on July 1, 1993, Dr. Gillett, the clinical director of Utah State Hospital's forensic unit, testified that Mace suffered from the ego dystonic form of obsessive compulsive paraphilia. The doctor explained that the disorder includes a compulsive, uncontrollable need to have excessive sexual intercourse, even though the patient does not want to do so. Patients "try all kinds of means to stop doing it but usually it builds up and builds up until it becomes what [is] called an irresistible impulse." On cross-examination, Dr. Gillett testified that Mace "obviously had intent" and "obviously knew [his forced sexual intercourse with the victim] was wrong," but that Mace was unable to conform his conduct to the law.

On the basis of Dr. Gillett's testimony, the trial court allowed Mace to change his plea to not guilty by reason of insanity. The next day, the trial court issued an unsigned minute entry in which it denied Mace's constitutional challenges without specifying the reasons for the denial, and directed the prosecution to prepare a formal order on the denial.

At a second hearing on July 19th, the trial court granted Mace's subsequent motion to amend his plea to "guilty and mentally ill," conditioned on Mace's right to appeal the court's adverse ruling on his constitutional challenges, pursuant to rule 11(i) of the Utah Rules of Criminal Procedure. 1 The prosecution agreed to drop the sexual assault and kidnaping charges for the purposes of the plea agreement. Mace, his attorney, the prosecutor, and the trial judge each signed the plea agreement that same day.

On August 2nd, two weeks after Mace entered the conditional guilty plea, the trial court signed findings of fact and conclusions of law regarding the court's earlier denial of Mace's constitutional challenges. The court denied Mace's due process claims on the merits but ruled that Mace had no standing to challenge Utah's sentencing scheme for the mentally ill because he had not established that he was subject to the challenged statutes. Although this ruling may have been correct at the time of the July 1st hearing on the constitutional issues, it was obviously incorrect at the time it was signed because Mace had by then pleaded guilty and mentally ill, thus making him subject to the challenged statutes.

The trial court subsequently sentenced Mace to two concurrent five-to-life terms and later found that Mace qualified for the status of guilty and mentally ill. Accordingly, the court ordered Mace committed to the Department of Human Services for care and treatment until his transfer to the Utah Department of Corrections, pursuant to sections 77-16a-203 and -204 of the Code.

Mace duly appealed to this court, claiming that (i) the conditional plea properly reserved his right to appeal the constitutional issues, even though they were nondispositive of his case, and (ii) Utah's statutory scheme violated federal and state due process requirements. Pursuant to the parties' stipulation, this court stayed the briefing pending our resolution of two other cases then on appeal. As anticipated, our holding in State v. Montoya, 887 P.2d 857, 860 (Utah 1994)--that an issue reserved on a conditional plea need not be dispositive of the prosecution--fully disposes of Mace's first issue and dictates that Mace's conditional plea was proper. Similarly, our opinion in State v. Herrera, 895 P.2d 359, 363-68 (Utah 1995), rejected the identical due process claims that Mace raised in his initial brief and thus defeats Mace's due process challenge.

Following the Herrera decision, the State moved for summary affirmance of the trial court. However, we granted leave for Mace to supplement his brief with a claim that punishing him violated constitutional prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment. That is the only claim we address in this opinion. Because the claim implicates the constitutionality of the statutory scheme codifying Utah's insanity defense, we grant no deference to the trial court in our review of its legal conclusions. State v. James, 819 P.2d 781, 796 (Utah 1991); see also State v. Pena, 869 P.2d 932, 938-39 (Utah 1994).

As a preliminary matter, the State claims that Mace waived his right to challenge Utah's sentencing scheme for the mentally ill because after the trial court ruled that Mace lacked standing to assert the challenge, he failed to renew the challenge at or after his sentencing. We reject this argument. Mace properly preserved the right to appeal the trial court's adverse ruling on his cruel and unusual punishment claim at the time he entered his conditional plea. We note that Mace entered his conditional plea on the basis of the trial court's unsigned minute entry before the trial court had issued its findings of fact and conclusions of law. Ordinarily, an unsigned minute entry lacks the finality to constitute an appealable order. Ron Shepherd Ins., Inc. v. Shields, 882 P.2d 650, 652 (Utah 1994). Logically, it would seem that an unsigned minute entry likewise could not constitute a sufficient "adverse determination" for the purposes of a rule 11(i) conditional plea. However, in light of the fact that the conditional plea agreement was signed by the trial judge, the prosecutor, Mace, and his attorney, the agreement itself reflected a consensus that the unsigned minute entry was a sufficient "adverse determination" for a rule 11(i) plea and a consensus to preserve the merits of Mace's constitutional issues for appeal. Applying the concept of waiver in these circumstances would utterly defeat the purpose of conditional pleas, which is to avoid the pointless and wasteful exercise of " 'forcing the parties to go through an entire trial merely to preserve the ... issue.' " Montoya, 887 P.2d at 859 (quoting State v. Sery, 758 P.2d 935, 939 (Utah Ct.App.1988)). We therefore conclude that Mace did not waive his cruel and unusual punishment claim.

We now address the merits of Mace's claim. He challenges section 76-2-305 of the Utah Code, which provides in pertinent part:

(1) It is a defense to a prosecution under any statute or ordinance that the defendant, as a result of mental illness, lacked the mental state required as an element of the offense charged. Mental illness is not otherwise a defense.

Utah Code Ann. § 76-2-305(1). As we have previously explained, this statute limits the insanity defense to negating the mens rea necessary for conviction. See Herrera, 895 P.2d at 361-62; State v. Young, 853 P.2d 327, 383-84 (Utah 1993) (opinion of Durham, J.). As a result, the statute allows for the conviction of those who have the requisite mens rea, even though they may not appreciate the wrongfulness of their conduct or are unable to control their conduct. Mace claims that punishing such offenders is cruel and unusual, in violation of the Eighth Amendment 2 to the United States Constitution and article I, section 9 3 of the Utah Constitution.

We decline to undertake a state constitutional analysis of Mace's claim because he "does not argue that the analysis of this issue under the Utah Constitution would be different from its analysis under the federal constitution.... This Court will not engage in constructing arguments out of whole cloth...." State v. Lafferty, 749 P.2d 1239, 1247 & n. 5 (Utah 1988), habeas corpus granted on other grounds, Lafferty v. Cook, 949 F.2d 1546 (10th Cir.1991), cert. denied, 504 U.S. 911, 112 S.Ct. 1942, 118 L.Ed.2d 548 (1992); accord Parsons v. Barnes, 871 P.2d 516, 519 n. 2 (Utah), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 115 S.Ct. 431, 130 L.Ed.2d 344 (1994). Mace has not separately briefed his state constitutional claim, and we do not reach it.

Turning to Mace's federal claim, we note that Mace does not specify whether he is challenging section 76-32-305 on...

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