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State v. Merrill6/10/2005
v. Ostler, 2001 UT 68, 31 P.3d 528, we acknowledged and resolved a statutory ambiguity concerning which procedural event triggered the thirty-day plea withdrawal window. We held that the statutory description of the period available to withdraw a plea, "30 days after the entry of the plea," Utah Code Ann. § 77-13-6(2)(b) (1999), referred to the date of entry of final judgment and not to the date of the plea colloquy. Ostler, 2001 UT 68 at 11. The legislative history of the statute anchored most of this holding. Id. at 9. We reinforced our reasoning, however, with the observation that to start the time for moving to withdraw a plea from the time the district court accepted a plea could "deprive the district court of the power to review a plea before it enters a judgment of conviction and sentence," an outcome we found to be unreasonably unfair. Id. at 10. Contributing to the unfairness of this alternative interpretation was our assumption, culled from the dictum in Abeyta, that failure to bring a timely motion to withdraw a guilty plea had jurisdictional consequences. Id.
State v. Reyes, 2002 UT 13, 40 P.3d 630, completed the evolution of our analysis of the thirty-day filing period with the express recognition of its jurisdictional status as an integral part of the holding. Moreover, we accorded increased veneration to our earlier commentaries on the jurisdictional status of the thirty-day filing window of section 77-13-6(2)(b), elevating them from dicta to holdings. Id. at 3. When we explained why we were turning away Mr. Reyes's motion to withdraw his plea, we stated:
We decline to address this issue because we do not have jurisdiction to address it. Section 77-13-6 of the Utah Code was amended in 1989 to require a defendant to file a motion to withdraw a guilty plea within thirty days after the entry of the plea. Utah Code Ann. § 77-13-6 (1999). We have held that failure to do so extinguishes a defendant's right to challenge the validity of the guilty plea on appeal. See State v. Abeyta, 852 P.2d 993, 995 (Utah 1993) (noting that "the plea statute limits a defendant's right to withdraw his or her guilty plea to thirty days after entry of the plea" and that "thereafter, the right is extinguished"); State v. Ostler, 2001 UT 68, 10, 31 P.3d 528 (noting that "because State v. Johnson, 856 P.2d 1064, 1067 (Utah 1993), requires a defendant to move for a withdrawal in the district court before he can challenge a plea on appeal, his appeal rights on the plea question could be cut off."). Accordingly, because Reyes did not move to withdraw his guilty plea within thirty days after the entry of the plea, we lack jurisdiction to address the issue on appeal.
Id. Although the retroactive promotion of dictum to holding is a practice we do not endorse, we neither apologize for our assessments of the jurisdictional nature of the thirty-day filing period in Abeyta and Ostler nor retreat from what is clearly our holding in Reyes, all of which imposes a jurisdictional bar on late-filed motions to withdraw guilty pleas.
Due to the unconventional treatment we have afforded it, we have never engaged in a thoroughgoing analysis of why section 77-13-6(2)(b) is jurisdictional. Though largely unexplained, our approach to the thirty-day filing period has been consistent. More importantly, the filing limitation's presumptive jurisdictional effect has shaped the outcome of the cases in which it has played a role. For example, in Ostler, the argument that the thirty-day filing period should commence from the date on which final judgment is entered may owe its persuasive force to the "serious problems" that we noted could beset a scheme in which a jurisdictional motion filing period be
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