Background
The Utah Supreme Court denied extraordinary relief to a DUI defendant who tried to plead guilty in justice court before prosecutors filed an enhanced felony charge. The decision explains the three hurdles for relief under Utah Rule of Appellate Procedure 19 and emphasizes that satisfying threshold eligibility does not entitle a petitioner to a remedy. Even a properly presented constitutional issue may go undecided when the requested ruling is unlikely to improve the petitioner’s position.
George Adams allegedly drove while intoxicated and collided with two vehicles. Salt Lake City charged him in justice court with DUI and related offenses. Months later, Adams attempted to plead guilty, but the City withheld consent under Utah Code section 41-6a-513, which makes a DUI plea invalid unless the prosecutor agrees. The justice court rejected his separation-of-powers and due-process challenges and dismissed the case without prejudice. Meanwhile, the county prosecutor filed an enhanced third-degree-felony charge in district court based on an alleged injury from the crash.
Because no justice-court conviction or sentence existed, Adams could not pursue an ordinary appeal. He petitioned the supreme court directly, asking it to invalidate the prosecutorial-consent law and return him to justice court to plead to the original misdemeanors. He argued that allowing prosecutors to veto a guilty plea intruded on judicial power and that the delay and pretrial supervision violated due process.
The Court’s Holding
Associate Chief Justice Pohlman’s opinion held that Adams properly invoked rule 19 for the separation-of-powers challenge because he lacked a plain, speedy, and adequate ordinary remedy and alleged a misuse of judicial authority. But rule 19 requires more: a petitioner must establish a recognized ground for relief and then persuade the court to exercise its broad remedial discretion. Extraordinary review is not a substitute for an appeal and does not guarantee correction of every alleged legal error.
The court declined to decide the constitutional question. Vacating the justice-court ruling would not itself dismiss the felony case pending in district court, and Adams had requested no relief directed at that prosecution. Even if the felony case disappeared, Utah Rule of Criminal Procedure 11(e) permitted the justice court to reject his plea, and Adams conceded a substantial possibility that it would do so. Constitutional avoidance weighed against issuing a ruling that likely would provide no practical benefit.
The due-process theory failed at an earlier stage. The justice court had rejected it as inadequately briefed, while Adams’s petition argued the constitutional merits without showing that the briefing ruling was an abuse of discretion. Because he did not engage the actual rationale under review, he failed to establish a rule 65B ground for relief. The petition was denied without resolving whether the prosecutorial-consent statute violates separation of powers.
Key Takeaways
- Rule 19 petitioners must show no adequate remedy, a recognized ground for relief, and a reason for the court to exercise discretion.
- A court may avoid a constitutional issue when the requested ruling is unlikely to give the petitioner meaningful relief.
- Extraordinary-writ briefing must confront the lower court’s actual rationale, including a finding that an argument was inadequately briefed.
Why It Matters
For Utah criminal and appellate lawyers, Adams is a practical warning against treating extraordinary review as an automatic route around a nonappealable order. A petition should connect the requested writ to a concrete change in the pending proceedings and explain why ordinary litigation cannot supply that result. Petitioners also should request relief broad enough to address intervening proceedings without asking the appellate court to speculate about what another court might do.
The opinion leaves the constitutionality of section 41-6a-513 open. Future litigants may still raise separation-of-powers objections, but they will need a procedural posture in which a ruling matters. Counsel preserving due-process claims should fully brief them below and, on review, identify why the lower court’s stated procedural disposition itself qualifies as an abuse of discretion.