Natty Shafer Law

Utah lawyer for criminal and immigration cases

Tag Archives: Utah criminal lawyer


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The Hidden Costs of Pleading Guilty

“I am just going to plead guilty. I do not need a lawyer.” People frequently tell me that it would be pointless to hire a lawyer because they know they are guilty. Many people like the idea of accepting responsibility and moving on with their lives. Unfortunately, it is rarely that simple when the criminal justice system is involved. Most people know about traditional punishments like fines and jail time, but convictions have hidden costs.

Convictions have both legal and extra-legal penalties that are not apparent until several months or years have passed. With the permanency of computer records, these penalties often haunt people for the rest of their lives. And make no mistake, a guilty plea is a conviction and criminal records make no distinction as to whether someone has accepted responsibility. Here are some common hidden costs of convictions:

    • Driver’s Licenses – In Utah, licenses can be suspended for certain drug or alcohol offenses even if the criminal offense had nothing to do with driving.
    • Owning a Firearm – Any felony conviction and many misdemeanor convictions make it illegal to own firearms or other weapons. In Utah, a DUI conviction leads to a concealed weapons permit being denied or revoked for at least six years.
    • Student Loans – Many drug convictions make it harder or impossible to qualify for federally subsidized student loans.
    • Immigration – Convictions for felonies and misdemeanors can carry long-lasting effects for anyone who is not a U.S. citizen. Convictions may lead to deportation or make it harder to later become a U.S. citizen or change immigration status.
    • Applying for a Job – Many employers routinely conduct background checks.

This is not even an exhaustive list of the hidden costs of convictions. For many people, these hidden penalties are worse than the traditional penalties. Pleading guilty may ultimately be the right choice for a particular case, but a lawyer can structure a plea to minimize or eliminate these hidden costs. Not all crimes will cause a driver’s license to be suspended, for example, and it may be possible to plead to a related charge that does not have the potential for license suspension.

In addition to the hidden costs, a lawyer can also help with those costs the traditional costs of a conviction. These days prosecutors have a kitchen sink approach to charging people. Even assuming that someone is one of those rare people that do not care about maintaining a driver’s license, having a job, or being allowed to live in this country, walking into a court and pleading guilty is a foolish proposition. Often, one or more charges will be dropped in exchange for a plea, and having fewer charges can reduce the fine. You may also be neglecting the fact that you are not guilty of some of the charges. No one should let a vague notion that they have done something wrong substitute for a proper analysis of all the charges.

My lawyer fee could be partially or wholly paid just by getting charges dropped and fines reduced. It is always best to have a lawyer look over the charges and analyze the case as a whole. Many lawyers, including me, offer free consultations.


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Utah’s Minor in Possession of Alcohol Law

Utah’s law prohibiting minors from possessing alcohol has been referenced in the news over the last few days because an underage football player for the University of Utah received a citation for allegedly possessing alcohol. A minor in Utah may not buy, possess, or consume alcohol under Utah Code 32B-4-409. The law also makes it illegal to knowingly present false identification or otherwise misrepresent someone’s age in order to obtain alcohol or to attempt to buy or to ask an adult to buy alcohol.

Most states have similar laws, but many people may not be aware that, in Utah, a minor’s driver’s license can be suspended even if no driving was involved. Many minors care far more about the driver’s license suspension than about the possibilities of large fines, jail time, or the repercussions of having misdemeanors on their records. The Utah Driver’s License Division may suspend the minor’s licence for 1 to 2 years, depending on the circumstances of the alleged crime. The driver’s license suspension will not be shorter just because a person was almost 21 years of age, either.

There are other ways, however, to shorten or to avoid a driver’s license suspension. The law allows a judge to reduce the suspension if the minor completes an “educational series” about substance abuse. Sometimes it is possible to complete the classes before a guilty plea is even entered. In such cases, it may be possible to convince the judge to forgo the license suspension entirely.

If you or someone you know has been accused under Utah’s minor in possession law, it is important to hire a lawyer immediately. It will help anyone accused to navigate the system and maximize their chances of keeping their driver’s licenses.


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Cell Phones Are Private, Supreme Court Says

The United States Supreme Court issued a ruling today which requires law enforcement officers to obtain a search warrant for most searches of a cell phone. While the Court left open the possibility of officers conducting a cell phone search during “exigent circumstances,” the ruling in Riley v. California means officers cannot casually peruse cell phones.

The ruling was unanimous, which is a bit of a surprise for me, but this is a pretty big victory for champions of privacy rights. Often the Court refuses to protect the rights of those accused of crimes, but cell phones have becomes so ubiquitous that the Court could not ignore that cell phones are now among our most personal possessions. “Modern cell phones, as a category, implicate privacy concerns far beyond those implicated by the search of a cigarette pack, a wallet, or a purse,” the Court said.

Many phones now contain more personal information than anyone has in any one location, including our homes. As the Court said, cell phones are not just phones. “The term ‘cell phone’ is itself misleading shorthand; many of these devices are in fact minicomputers that also happen to have the capacity to be used as a telephone.”

This ruling does necessarily guarantee that police officers will never look through your phone, but it does make such evidence generally inadmissible during criminal court proceedings. Anyone who has been subjected to a cell phone search should contact a lawyer about various options.

You can read my previous posts on the subject of cell phone searches here and here.


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Standard Operating Procedure

The home of former Utah attorney general Mark Shurtleff was the subject of a search warrant earlier this week, as various law enforcement agencies investigate alleged wrongdoing. Shurtleff accused the agents of “Dirty Harry” tactics on a local radio broadcast yesterday.

Shurtleff’s accusations are short on specifics, but what he does describe is not out of the ordinary. The officers were armed and wearing body armor. Shurtleff says they took his children’s computers and the memory cards from his wife’s camera, and that they trashed his house. It is standard operating procedure for law enforcement officers to be armed while on duty, and they are not careful about keeping a house orderly and clean when executing a search warrant. They confiscate anything that could hold relevant information such as computers or memory cards.

“I think if they’ll do that to me, with my entire life and career in service to law enforcement and public safety, they’ll do it to anybody,” he said. In today’s world, having a search warrant executed on one’s home is traumatizing. Imagine if Shurtleff had come to this realization when he was in a position to do something about it.


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When the ‘War on Drugs’ Affects the Wealthy

NPR reported today that U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Air and Marine Operations will alter its policy that has led to private aircraft pilots being searched, sometimes at gunpoint, by law enforcement officers.

How Customs and Border Protection (CPB) will alter its policy is not yet clear. Currently, CPB operate a tracking center, which monitors privately operated flights. They look for patterns that suggests drug transportation, such as taking an alleged drug route or flying in a manner that evades radar. When they find suspicious activity, CPB can alert law enforcement at the flight’s destination. Unfortunately, various law enforcement officials have used that information to aggressively search the planes of anyone suspected.

Tom and Bonnie Lewis love to fly airplanes so much that they live in a residential airpark near Fort Worth, Texas, where their garage is a hangar.

Two years ago, they packed their bags, loaded them into the airplane, and took off for Nashua, New Hampshire, to visit their daughter and her family. Mid-route, they stopped at an airport in Frankfort, Kentucky, to refuel and spend the night, when they noticed that a small jet had landed directly behind them, with no radio communication.

Four federal agents shouldering assault rifles scrambled out of the jet and surrounded the Lewis’s little two-seater plane, asking for IDs.

“Asking where we’d been, basically checking us out,” says Tom Lewis. “It didn’t take them too long to figure out they had grandma and grandpa that were taking a trip to New Hampshire to visit the grandkids.”

When the Constitution conflicts with the aims of the War on Drugs, the Constitution frequently loses. CPB acknowledges that in 68% of the cases this year where law enforcement was notified, no illegal activity was found. The NPR story quotes Eddie Young, a deputy assistant commissioner at CPB, as saying, “A 32-percent success rate is not bad in the law enforcement community.” That Mr. Young could soberly make that defense of the old policy is more than a little appalling. For the innocent 68%, the trauma of being searched at gunpoint is apparently an acceptable cost of the War on Drugs.

Assuming the policy is in fact changed, it will be because most pilots are more wealthy and influential than the average citizen. Most people just have their complaints ignored when law enforcement officers violate civil liberties.


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Court Will Soon Clarify Cell Phone Searches

Tomorrow, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in two cases that will decide the extent law enforcement officers can search a person’s cell phone after an arrest. I have written about this issue before, and about how much sensitive data most people keep on their cell phones. Once the Court issues its ruling, we will know where whether our cell phones are really private.

People put embarrassing and deeply personal information on their cell phones, but most data files do not relate to criminal acts. The couple depicted in the commercial below probably would not want anyone looking through their cell phones. If the Court allows it, police departments will routinely copy all the information from seized cell phones and upload it to a database for permanent storage. Government officials could peruse the data whenever it suits them.

The capabilities of cell phones allow for nearly unlimited personal information to be stored. Some smartphones now hold 64 gigabytes of data. Right now, phones have enough space to store thousands of personal emails, pictures, videos, and text messages simultaneously, and data storage capacity increases each successive year.

If the Court rules that an arrest does not necessarily justify a search of a suspect’s phone, the police will still have the option to request a warrant. With electronic warrants, it is possible to issue a search warrant within a couple of minutes. The importance of this is that you have a neutral judge deciding whether there is probable cause to search the phone. Otherwise, we will have police officers fishing for evidence for each person they arrest, and the private lives of everyone will be a little less private.


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Anonymous Tip? Enough for a Traffic Stop

A Supreme Court decision came out today, and it now appears the police can pull over anyone with just an anonymous tip. The case, Navarette v. California, involved a tip from an unknown caller describing the truck and license plate of the defendants.

The driver in this case drove perfectly, at least while the police observed. An anonymous caller alerted 9-1-1 dispatch that a truck had allegedly run her off the road. Concerned about possible drunken driving, police located the truck and followed it for five minutes, but they failed to observe a single traffic violation. It is extraordinarily difficult to drive perfectly for five minutes. The police usually can find a traffic violation to pull over a vehicle, but they did not find a single reason. They pulled over the car anyway. But the Court said that is fine.

This should concern anyone who drives or rides in a car. The Court has put the threshold for pulling over someone at a very low point. Someone can now identify your car and allege some sort of traffic violation, and you may be pulled over. Anyone with a grudge can use the police to harass citizens. Jilted exes, disgruntled coworkers, or stalkers need to allege something, and the police can make a traffic stop, and detain the unfortunate victim. The Court’s rationale hinged on the fact that 9-1-1 calls can be traced, but if no one is motivated to investigate, callers will remain anonymous.


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Sorcery and the Law

You think it’s just memorizing a bunch of spells and throwing them at him, like you’re in class or something? The whole time you’re sure you know there’s nothing between you and dying except your own—your brain brain or guts or whatever…

—Harry Potter, chapter 15, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Most people have a decidedly magical view of lawyering. Speak the right Latin phrase and—presto!—the judge rules in your favor. A police officer fails to give you a Miranda warning and—abracadabra!—the charges are dismissed.

The law is magic.

Lawyers are wizards.

People ask me for ways to handle their own case. For myriad reasons, this is a bad idea, but the biggest reason is that most people have no idea what to expect in court. They do not even know the reason for their next court date, let alone what they are supposed to do once they get there. They say, “if you just told me what to do, I’ll save myself a lot of money and you can save yourself the the hassle.” If only it were so simple. This is the simplistic view that Harry Potter says people have about magical duels. There is more to lawyering than just muttering a Latin incantation to a judge, and nothing is simple once you get to court.

In truth, it would be easy to give a naive client a plan A for when they get to court, but they will also need a plan B, C, and D. Whenever the client is throwing “incantations” about the law, the other side is throwing them right back at you. Anyone unprepared will lose a case that they could have won. Nearly any case can be lost through bad lawyering. There are many rules of the courtroom that are not forgiving to the uniformed. For example, if someone fails to object in a timely manner, the law considers the objection waived. Miss a crucial objection and it will sink the case and its appeal, too. Knowing how and when to make objections is something that takes years of study and practice.

People often think that because they are innocent they do not need a lawyer. A proper resolution to a criminal case can take months or even years. This is no less true for those who have a good case for defense and are factually not guilty of the crime. There is no way to quickly teach someone how to fight a case.

People think they can show up to the arraignment, and (Perry Mason style) the judge will see how wronged they have been, and the charges will be magically dismissed. Even if you have a good issue for suppression, you have to know when and how to raise the issue. In my experience, laypeople are bad at even identifying issues for suppression and do not know what will happen even if they win. Sometimes, a prosecutor can proceed with charges without the piece of suppressed evidence.

For so many reasons, it is best to hire a lawyer. Let them do their magic and fight the battle for you.


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Is Prosecutorial Misconduct Becoming Common?

That certainly seems to be the opinion of a growing number of judges, and a few opinion writers have have followed their lead and registered complaint. The most prominent judicial critic thus far has been Chief Judge Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit Court. Writing a scathing dissent of the Court’s refusal to rehear United States v. Olsen last December, Kozinski characterized the panel opinion as a free pass for prosecutors to shirk their duties. He wrote, “the prosecution need not produce exculpatory or impeaching evidence so long as it’s possible the defendant would’ve been convicted anyway.”

Prosecutors have a constitutional duty in the United States to turn over evidence that could be favorable for the defendant. To fail to do so would be a due process violation and should be grounds for a new trial and sanctions against the prosecutor. You would not know it, however, by examining appellate court decisions. All too often, appellate judges shrug theirs shoulders and decide to do nothing.

It has been just over fifty years since the Supreme Court explicitly stated a prosecutor has a duty to turn over evidence to the defendant. In Brady v. Maryland the Court held, “the suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused upon request violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution.” As United States v. Olsen shows, however, appellate courts find that a lot of evidence is not “material.” Taping unparalleled powers of mind-reading, appellate judges regularly express “confidence” that a jury would have convicted even if they had heard the evidence favorable to the defendant. Kozinski thinks this has lead to rampant unethical prosecutorial behavior. “Some prosecutors don’t care about Brady because courts don’t make them care,” he wrote in his dissent.

The bottom line is that there are plenty of incentives for prosecutors to shirk their duties, but few disincentives. Formal sanctions from state bar associations are rare. Appellate courts are reluctant to overturn convictions. In the rare instances where a conviction is overturned, a prosecutor is rarely personally punished. It is very difficult to bring civil suits against prosecutors for constitutional violations. They enjoy qualified immunity which means—without getting too technical—there is a threshold a person has to show before they are even allowed to get their day in court and sue for damages. And if someone happens to prevail in spite of those difficulties, taxpayers pay the settlement.


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And Down the Slippery Slope We Go

The Utah legislature is considering a bill that requires police departments to collect a DNA sample from every person arrested for a felony. This is the logical extension of last year’s Supreme Court decision Maryland v. King, which I discussed at the time. The Court limited its decision to the collection of DNA for “serious offenses,” but it did not say what constitutes a serious offense. The Maryland law that the Court condoned limited DNA collection to those arrested for violent crimes (specifically enumerated under Maryland law), for an attempted violent crimes, or for burglary. The Utah bill (HB212) expands DNA collection to everyone arrested for any felony.

The Supreme Court justices are not known for being imprecise with language. If the Court had intended to say it was acceptable to collect the DNA of everyone accused of a felony, it could have done so. Instead it chose the undefined phrase “serious offenses.” It is a phrase vague enough to not raise initial concern—I do not remember any non-lawyers expressing concern about the decision—but allows the Court to later expand DNA collection for all arrestees. This should worry anyone concerned about civil liberties. Utah already collects the DNA of everyone convicted of felonies. The only people a change in the law would negatively affect are people who are arrested but later acquitted. This is another way the criminal justice system is eroding civil liberties of everyone, whether or not they are guilty of anything.

UPDATE: The legislature passed this bill, and it was signed by governor Gary Herbert. It went into law on May 13, 2014.