State v. Paule

• Docket Number: 20220039
• Decision Date: 08 August 2024
• Citation: 554 P.3d 844
• Parties: STATE of Utah, Respondent, v. Elbert John PAULE, Petitioner.
• Court: Utah Supreme Court

554 P.3d 844

2024 UT 2

STATE of Utah, Respondent,

v.Elbert John PAULE, Petitioner.

No. 20220039

Supreme Court of Utah.

Heard: March 6, 2023

Filed February 1, 2024

Rehearing Denied August 8, 2024

Fourth District, Provo, The Honorable Lynn W. Davis, No. 191400658

Sean D. Reyes, Att’y Gen., David A. Simpson, Asst. Solic.Gen., Salt Lake City, for respondent

Douglas J. Thompson, Jennifer L. Foresta, Provo, for petitioner

Chief Justice Durrantauthored the opinion of the Court, in which Associate Chief Justice Pearce, Justice Petersen, Justice Hagen, and Justice Pohlman joined.

On Certiorari to the Utah Court of Appeals

Chief Justice Durrant, opinion of the Court:

Introduction

¶1Elbert Paule argued over the phone with his friend (Friend).As the argument escalated, Friend said he intended to go to Paule’s apartment to "take him out."Friend also said that if he did go to Paule’s apartment, things would not end well for Paule.Although Paule told Friend not to come to his apartment, Friend came anyway.

¶2 When Friend arrived at Paule’s apartment and tried to open the door, Paule retrieved and loaded his shotgun.Friend then used the door code to open the apartment door, at which time Paule shot and killed Friend.Paule ran from his apartment to another friend’s house and soon thereafter traveled by shuttle bus to Las Vegas and then to San Diego, where his grandmother lives.

¶3The State charged Paule with murder, obstruction of justice, reckless endangerment, and assault, and he underwent a jury trial.The jury acquitted him on all charges except obstruction of justice.

¶4 Paule moved to arrest the judgment on the ground that the obstruction of justice conviction was legally inconsistent with the jury’s determination that he was not guilty of the other charged crimes.¹The trial court denied Paule’s motion.

¶5 Paule appealed his conviction to the court of appeals, arguing that the trial court erred in denying his motion to arrest judgment and that his counsel rendered ineffective assistance.The court of appeals affirmed Paule’s conviction, and we granted certiorari to review two of the court of appeals’ determinations: (1) that Paule’s conviction for obstruction of justice was not legally inconsistent with his acquittal on the other charges, and (2) that Paule could not demonstrate his trial counsel was ineffective in failing to seek a more detailed unanimity jury instruction.We affirm.

Background

¶6 Paule and Friend knew each other for a few months, during which time they hung out and played video games together.Their friendship began to deteriorate when another of Paule’s friends rebuffed Friend’s romantic advances and Paule intervened.

¶7 On the day of Friend’s death, Paule and Friend argued over the phone.Friend told Paule he planned to come to Paule’s apartment to "take him out."Paule responded to Friend, "Do not come over."Fearing that Friend would come to his apartment, Paule and one of his roommates established a special knock to identify who was at the apartment door.

¶8 Friend came to Paule’s apartment, bringing along Friend’s fiancée and infant child.Upon arriving at Paule’s apartment, Friend knocked on the door.Recognizing that the knock was not the identifiable one he and his roommate had established, Paule did not answer.Instead, he waited and hoped whoever was at the door would leave.When the person at the door had not left after five minutes, Paule went to his bedroom, retrieved his shotgun, loaded it, and returned to the apartment entryway—standing four or five feet from the door.According to Paule’s testimony, Friend—using the code to Paule’s apartment door, which was saved on his phone—opened the door holding a knife, the two made eye contact, Friend stepped into the doorway, and Paule fired the shotgun at Friend.

¶9 At that point, one of Paule’s roommates came out of his bedroom to see what had happened.Paule ran from his apartment, crossed the property, and jumped over a fence.He went to a friend’s house, then left Utah on a shuttle bus, traveling first to Las Vegas and then to San Diego.After Paule shot Friend, but before law enforcement officers arrived at the scene, the shotgun Paule used to shoot Friend ended up in the grass below Paule’s apartment balcony.In addition, sometime after Paule left his apartment, his phone went missing and was never found.

¶10 Eventually, Paule turned himself in to law enforcement.The State charged him with four crimes—(1) murder, a first-degree felony; (2) obstruction of justice; a second-degree felony (due to the first-degree felony nature of the murder charge); (3) reckless endangerment, a class-A misdemeanor; and (4) assault, a class-B misdemeanor—and the case went to trial.

¶11 In the State’s opening statement, it identified the obstruction of justice charge as follows: "Number two is obstruction of justice, when, after he shot [Friend], he took that shotgun [and] threw it off the balcony in order to hinder, delay, or prevent the investigation."At trial, competing evidence was presented.Paule testified that he shot Friend in self-defense.He stated that immediately after he shot Friend, his roommate took the shotgun from him.Paule further testified that he believed his phone had accidentally dropped out of his pocket when he jumped over the fence near his apartment complex.And, when asked why he left Utah and went to California, he testified that he had wanted to explain to his family what had happened.

¶12 The responding and investigating officers also testified at trial.The officer who arrived at the apartment immediately after the shooting testified that he found a knife just outside the apartment door and a spent shotgun shell inside the apartment.Another officer testified that he found the shotgun-loaded and ready to fire with the same brand of shell as the empty shell found in Paule’s apartment—in the grass below Paule’s apartment balcony.Forensic evidence established that the five identifiable prints on the shotgun (four fingerprints and one palmprint) all matched Paule.

¶13 Paule moved for a directed verdict on the obstruction of justice charge.Outside the jury’s presence, his counsel argued that no evidence showed that Paule had obstructed justice, explaining that although the shotgun was found in the grass outside, there was no evidence that Paule was the one who threw or dropped it from the balcony.In response, the State argued there was enough circumstantial evidence for a reasonable jury to conclude that Paule had obstructed justice by throwing the shotgun from the balcony.The court agreed with the State and determined that the jurors could "make their conclusion as it relates ultimately to [whether]they believe that … [Paule] discarded the shotgun and attempted to obstruct justice."Accordingly, the court denied Paule’s motion for a directed verdict.

¶14 In its closing argument, the State maintained that Paule committed obstruction of justice by throwing the shotgun from the balcony, saying:

Count 2 is obstruction of justice.That is when [Paule] threw the gun over the balcony.The statute says that … we’d have to show that … Paule did [this] with intent to hinder, delay or prevent the investigation, apprehension, prosecution, conviction or punishment of any person regarding conduct that constituted a criminal offense and did alter, destroy, conceal or remove any item or thing.Now, again, he threw that shotgun over and only his prints are on that.That would be consistent with him shooting the shot, going and throwing it over the balcony and then coming out a short time later to get away.

¶15The parties stipulated to the jury instructions.Regarding the obstruction of justice charge, the jury was instructed that it could not convict Paule unless it found, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Paule had "alter[ed], destroy[ed], conceal[ed] or remove[d] any item or thing" with the "intent to hinder, delay, or prevent the investigation, apprehension, prosecution, conviction, or punishment of any person regarding conduct that constitutes a criminal offense."The jury was also instructed that in all criminal cases, including Paule’s case, a verdict must be reached by the unanimous agreement of all the jurors.

¶16 The jury convicted Paule of obstruction of justice but acquitted him on all the other charges.Paule moved the trial court to arrest the lone conviction, arguing that it was legally inconsistent with the jury’s determination that he was not guilty of the other crimes.He asserted that if the jury determined he did not engage in conduct that constitutes a crime, it could not find him guilty under the elements of obstruction of justice.The court heard the parties’ arguments on the motion and denied it.

¶17 Paule appealed his conviction to the court of appeals, arguing that the trial court erred in denying his motion to arrest judgment and that his counsel rendered ineffective assistance.The court of appeals first reviewed Paule’s argument that his conviction should be vacated under the theory that the obstruction conviction was legally inconsistent with the acquittals on the other charges.It examined the language and legislative history of the obstruction of justice statute,² specifically noting that "the legislature added ‘investigation’ to the list of things that an actor cannot hinder, delay, or prevent without potentially committing obstruction of justice."³

¶18The court also highlighted that the legislature removed the phrase "for the commission of a crime" from the statute—replacing it with the phrase "regarding conduct that constitutes a criminal offense" and adding a definition of "conduct that constitutes a criminal offense."⁴The court reasoned that these changes indicated the legislature’s intent that under the obstruction of justice statute, a person can be convicted of obstruction of justice "even if the underlying conduct is never ultimately found to constitute a crime."⁵So, the court continued, to...