State v. Beloit

844 P.2d 18, 123 Idaho 36, 1992 Ida. LEXIS 187

• Court: Idaho Supreme Court
• Decided: December 30, 1992
• Docket: 19240
• Status: Published

Opinions

BAKES, Chief Justice.

Appellant Charles A. Beloit appeals from a felony conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol in violation of I.C. §§ 18-8004 and 18 — 8005(3).¹ Beloit entered a conditional plea of guilty to the felony, raising essentially one issue on appeal, i.e., that two of the three prior DUI convictions used by the State in enhancing his charge from a misdemeanor to a felony were not valid convictions for purposes of the felony enhancement provisions because Beloit was not provided all of his constitutional rights under the United States or Idaho Constitution at the time of those convictions. Beloit does not contest the validity of his DUI conviction from Kootenai County, but claims on appeal that the two Nez Perce County convictions, No. 62898 in 1987 and No. 69523 in 1989, were invalid. Beloit acknowledges that if either of the two Nez Perce County convictions is valid, then his appeal in this case is without merit. We conclude that the Nez Perce County conviction in No. 69523, entered October 30, 1989, is a valid conviction in which Beloit was accorded all of his constitutional rights, and accordingly, we affirm the conviction in this case.

Prior to entering his conditional plea of guilty, Beloit filed a motion in limine seeking to prevent the admission of the two prior Nez Perce County convictions. The prosecuting attorney produced certified copies of those two judgments of conviction, together with copies of the transcript of the proceedings and a rights form signed by the defendant. In Nez Perce County Case No. 69523, Beloit did not introduce any evidence himself, but rather argued that, even though the documents introduced by the State showed that he had waived his constitutional rights, the documents did not show that he did it knowingly and intelligently.

The trial court reviewed the record carefully and denied Beloit’s motion in limine, concluding that the conviction in Nez Perce County Case No. 69523, dated October 30, 1989, was a valid conviction and that Beloit had not carried his burden of raising an issue of fact regarding the validity of that conviction.

We conclude that the trial court did not err. The United States Supreme Court has held in Parke v. Raley, — U.S. —, 113 S.Ct. 517, 121 L.Ed.2d 391 (1992), that once the State has made a prima facie showing of the validity of a prior conviction used to enhance a pending crime, the burden of going forward with proof that the conviction was defective because of the denial of some constitutional right may be placed upon the defendant without violating the United States Constitution. See also Burgett v. Texas, 389 U.S. 109, 88 S.Ct. 258, 19 L.Ed.2d 319 (1967). Once the defendant does raise a triable issue of fact concerning whether the defendant was accorded all of his rights, or that he did not properly waive them, the burden is then upon the State to rebut the defendant’s evidence and convince the court that no violation of the defendant’s rights occurred. People v. Coffey, 67 Cal.2d 204, 60 Cal.Rptr. 457, 430 P.2d 15 (1967). The Eighth Circuit, in Losieau v. Sigler, 406 F.2d 795 (8th Cir.1969), cert. den. 396 U.S. 988, 90 S.Ct. 475, 24 L.Ed.2d 452 (1969), has also held that the burden of going forward with proof concerning the violation of constitutional rights in a case being used for enhancement purposes is on the defendant:

We are inclined to believe that Burgett must be read as holding that where the record is silent as to whether an accused was furnished counsel at a critical stage and where the accused introduces evidence tending to show that he was not in fact so represented, the burden then shifts to the state to prove, by a fair preponderance of the evidence, that the accused was represented.

Id. at 803. In this case, the trial court found that the defendant Beloit had not met his burden of producing evidence that he did not knowingly and intelligently waive his rights when he entered his counseled plea of guilty to the Nez Perce County Case No. 69523, entered October 18, 1989. Accordingly, the trial court properly used that conviction, along with the uncontested Kootenai County conviction, to enter judgment against Beloit.

Beloit argues that our decision in State v. Mesenbrink, 115 Idaho 850, 771 P.2d 514 (1989), requires that any judgment of conviction, in order to qualify for enhancement purposes, must contain essentially all of the information set out in Idaho Misdemeanor Rule 5(f). However, the sole issue authoritatively resolved in Mesenbrink was that the State of Idaho did not have a right to appeal and the Court in Mesenbrink dismissed the appeal. Accordingly, that portion of the Court’s opinion in Mesenbrink upon which the appellant Beloit relies was dicta, as correctly noted in the dissent of Justice Johnson in Mesenbrink.

Accordingly, we conclude that the State met its burden of establishing that Nez Perce County conviction No. 69523, entered October 30, 1989, was a valid conviction which, together with the Kootenai County conviction, was sufficient to enhance the current conviction to a felony. Therefore, we affirm the district court’s judgment of conviction.

JOHNSON and McDEVITT, JJ., and SCHWARTZMAN, J. pro tern., concur.

1 . I.C. § 18-8005(3) is currently renumbered I.C. § 18-8005(5).