2006 UT 42
This opinion is subject to revision before final
publication in the Pacific Reporter.
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF UTAH
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State of Utah,
No. 20041023
Plaintiff and Petitioner,
v.
F I L E D
Larry Niel Beckstead,
Defendant and Respondent.
August 4, 2006
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Second District, Ogden Dep't
The Honorable Pamela G. Heffernan
No. 021904375
Attorneys: Mark L. Shurtleff, Att'y Gen., Marian Decker, Asst.
Att'y Gen., Salt Lake City, for plaintiff
Randall W. Richards, Ogden, for defendant
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On Certiorari to the Utah Court of Appeals
NEHRING, Justice:
¶1
In this case, we define the scope of a sentencing
judge's duty to assure himself that a defendant's guilty plea is
knowing and voluntary when the judge discovers that the defendant
has been drinking before appearing to enter his plea. We
conclude that a sentencing judge has substantial latitude in
selecting the method he uses to supplement the elements of a plea
colloquy as required by rule 11 of the Utah Rules of Criminal
Procedure in order to assure that a plea is knowing and
voluntary. We expressly decline to mandate the use of particular
questions or procedures by a sentencing judge who considers a
guilty plea by a defendant who has consumed an intoxicant.
Instead, we believe that a sentencing judge is uniquely situated
to meaningfully engage a defendant in an exchange that will evoke
sufficient relevant evidence to determine whether or not the
defendant's plea should be accepted.

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FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
¶2
Larry Niel Beckstead was charged with driving under the
influence with priors, a third degree felony, in violation of
Utah Code section 41-6-44. Following negotiations, he entered a
guilty plea. Before accepting Mr. Beckstead's plea, the
sentencing judge conducted a colloquy in which she informed the
defendant of his rights and the consequences of his guilty plea
on those rights as required by rule 11 of the Utah Rules of
Criminal Procedure.
¶3
Immediately following the colloquy and the court's
acceptance of Mr. Beckstead's guilty plea, the prosecutor
informed the judge that she could smell alcohol on
Mr. Beckstead's breath. The judge then questioned Mr. Beckstead
on the subject of his sobriety. Mr. Beckstead admitted that he
had consumed some alcohol earlier that morning, but insisted that
his judgment was unimpaired. After putting numerous questions to
Mr. Beckstead concerning his lucidity, to which Mr. Beckstead
responded clearly and coherently in every instance, the court
renewed its acceptance of his guilty plea, sentenced him, and
took Mr. Beckstead into custody.
¶4
Less than a month later, Mr. Beckstead filed a pro se
motion to withdraw his guilty plea. He claimed that he had been
intoxicated when he pleaded guilty, that his plea was
consequently not knowing and voluntary, and that he was therefore
entitled to withdraw it.
¶5
The sentencing court held a hearing on the motion.
Before the hearing, the sentencing judge reviewed the video
recording of the plea hearing. At the conclusion of the hearing,
the sentencing judge stated that she could not find any evidence
suggesting impairment. The judge told Mr. Beckstead that "I
didn't see slurred speech, I didn't see wavering or, or having
trouble standing up or talking at all. . . . [Y]ou seemed to
understand all of the questions that I put to you and your
answers appeared to be articulate and coherent." The court
ultimately ruled that Mr. Beckstead's plea was knowing and
voluntary, and thus denied his motion to withdraw the guilty
plea.
¶6
Mr. Beckstead appealed the decision, and the court of
appeals reversed the sentencing court. It found "that the
[sentencing] court's knowledge that Beckstead had been drinking
prior to the hearing triggered a duty of further inquiry to
strictly comply with rule 11." State v. Beckstead, 2004 UT App
338, ¶ 11, 100 P.3d 267. We granted certiorari review to
No. 20041023
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consider the scope of a sentencing court's duty to explore the
effects of alcohol consumption on a defendant's ability to enter
a knowing and voluntary guilty plea.
STANDARD OF REVIEW
¶7
Challenges to a denial of a motion to withdraw a guilty
plea invite multiple standards of review. We will overturn a
sentencing court's ruling on a motion to withdraw a guilty plea
only when we are convinced that the court has abused its
discretion. We will disturb findings of fact made in connection
with a ruling on a motion to withdraw a guilty plea only if they
are clearly erroneous. State v. Benvenuto, 1999 UT 60, ¶ 11, 983
P.2d 556.
¶8
Moreover, we have noted that "the ultimate question of
whether the [sentencing] court strictly complied with
constitutional and procedural requirements for entry of a guilty
plea is a question of law that is reviewed for correctness."
State v. Hittle, 2004 UT 46, ¶ 4, 94 P.3d 268 (internal quotation
marks omitted). The correctness standard for reviewing the
lawfulness of the underlying plea operates in most instances to
neutralize the abuse of discretion standard for rulings on
motions to withdraw pleas. This is because an appellate
determination of sentencing-court-strict-compliance error will
almost certainly rise to the level of an abuse of discretion in
the instance when a sentencing court denies a motion to withdraw
a plea that was not accompanied by strict compliance with
constitutional and procedural requirements. The interpretation
of just what amounts to sentencing-court conduct that implicates
the "ultimate question" and thereby triggers nondeferential
review for correctness will, as we will disclose shortly,
directly influence our determination that the court of appeals'
holding must be reversed.
¶9
Finally, we note that on certiorari we review the
decision of the court of appeals and not the sentencing court.
We disagree with the court of appeals' view that rule 11 imposed
additional investigatory requirements on the sentencing judge
concerning Mr. Beckstead's ability to enter a knowing and
voluntary guilty plea and therefore reverse.
ANALYSIS
¶10
Rule 11 of the Utah Rules of Criminal Procedure
requires that guilty pleas be accepted only from defendants who
understand the rights they surrender by pleading guilty and who
voluntarily waive those known rights. State v. Benvenuto, 1999
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No. 20041023

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UT 60, ¶ 11, 983 P.2d 556. The responsibility for assuring that
a defendant's guilty plea meets this standard falls upon the
sentencing judge. In carrying out his responsibilities, a
sentencing judge is guided by the detailed inventory of rights
that a defendant will waive if his guilty plea is accepted.
These rights are contained within the text of rule 11. Over time
we have made clear that a sentencing judge must communicate to a
defendant the full complement of information found in rule 11
concerning the rights he is relinquishing by pleading guilty.
The sentencing judge must then receive from the defendant an
affirmation that he committed the offense to which he is pleading
guilty, that he knows of and understands the rights he is
surrendering, and that his plea is voluntary. The dialogue that
occurs between the sentencing judge and a defendant when a guilty
plea is offered, commonly known as the plea colloquy, provides an
opportunity for the sentencing judge to assess not only the
verbal content of the defendant's responses, but also the entire
spectrum of verbal and nonverbal behavior that comprises his
presence before the judge.
¶11
We have traditionally granted sentencing courts
substantial discretion to employ methods tailored to determine
whether a specific guilty plea is knowing and voluntary. We have
stated that such a determination "does not mandate a particular
script or rote recitation. . . . [T]he substantive goal of rule
11 is to ensure that defendants know of their rights and thereby
understand the basic consequences of their decision to plead
guilty. That goal should not be overshadowed or undermined by
formalistic ritual." State v. Visser, 2000 UT 88, ¶ 11, 22 P.3d
1242.
¶12
The court of appeals held that the sentencing judge did
not make sufficient inquiry into Mr. Beckstead's possible
alcohol-induced impairment and therefore had an inadequate
factual basis upon which to support its ultimate finding that his
guilty plea was knowing and voluntary. Although the court of
appeals does not tie its holding to a particular standard of
review, we assume that it believed its holding touched on the
"ultimate question" of compliance with the constitutional and
procedural requirements for the entry of a plea and was therefore
subject to correctness review. Using this approach, one that
focused its review on the plea hearing rather than on the motion
to set aside the plea, the court of appeals was able to bypass
review of the propriety of the sentencing court's ruling on
Mr. Beckstead's motion to withdraw his plea, a ruling that was
owed considerable deference.
No. 20041023
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¶13
To the extent that the court of appeals applied a
correctness standard to the sentencing court's ruling, it erred.
The court of appeals grounded its holding on the "inadequate
factual basis" relied on by the sentencing court to conclude that
Mr. Beckstead was not impaired when he entered his guilty plea.
The court's rationale has all of the hallmarks of a sufficiency
of the evidence challenge and therefore is well suited for review
under a clearly erroneous standard.
¶14
Judge Davis's dissent takes proper note of the
majority's faulty selection of standard of review when he
observes that there is no support for the conclusion that the
sentencing court's finding that Mr. Beckstead was not impaired
was clearly erroneous. Only by transmuting the finding that
Mr. Beckstead was not intoxicated into a default of the
sentencing court's duty to strictly comply with rule 11 could the
court of appeals' majority have denied deference to the
sentencing judge's finding. Every finding of fact made by a
sentencing court bearing on the question of whether a defendant's
guilty plea was knowing and voluntary could be easily morphed
into an issue of strict rule 11 compliance. The range of rule 11
matters subject to strict compliance is not so expansive that it
engulfs all findings of fact. Rather, our understanding of
strict compliance in the context of guilty plea review refers to
a sentencing judge's duty to communicate comprehensively and
without deviation the substantive information required to be
imparted by rule 11. It does not, by contrast, extend to
judgments made by a sentencing judge that relate to the knowing
and voluntary character of a guilty plea. Those matters are
subject to review for abuse of discretion.
¶15
We decline to judicially amend rule 11 to mandate
additional minimum inquiries that a sentencing court must pursue
when alerted that a defendant may be unable to enter a knowing
and voluntary guilty plea. Such additions would increase the
range of matters with which a sentencing judge would be required
to strictly comply. This would be unwise.
¶16
While we agree that "[r]ule 11 counsels a [sentencing]
court to make further inquiry into a defendant's competence to
enter a guilty plea once the court has been informed that the
defendant has recently ingested . . . substances capable of
impairing his ability to make a knowing and intelligent waiver of
his constitutional rights," United States v. Cole, 813 F.2d 43,
46 (3d Cir. 1987), we do not believe that such an inquiry must
follow a specific line of questioning as mandated by the court of
appeals. The court of appeals held that upon notice that a
defendant may have alcohol in his system a sentencing judge must
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No. 20041023

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at a minimum inquire "into the amount of alcohol that [the
defendant] had consumed [and] the amount of time that had elapsed
since his last drink." State v. Beckstead, 2004 UT App 338,
¶ 10, 100 P.3d 267. In our view, a mandated script would subvert
the objective of encouraging the flexible probe of a defendant's
competence that accompanies a meaningful engagement between judge
and defendant.
¶17
The court of appeals' majority notes that there is a
"well-known tendency of persons to understate their alcohol
intake and level of intoxication to members of the justice
system." Id. ¶ 8. It advances this observation in support of
its belief that additional mandated judicial inquiry is in order
to test the credibility of self-reporting. We are not confident,
however, that the content of a defendant's verbal answers to a
series of mandated questions would be any more reliable than a
defendant's subjective evaluation of his cognitive condition.
That is not to say that the court would be unable to glean other
useful nonverbal information about a defendant's condition from
further questioning. In this case, the sentencing judge placed
considerable reliance on his observations of Mr. Beckstead's
demeanor. Putting more questions to Mr. Beckstead about his
drinking might have elicited additional nonverbal clues to his
ability to enter a guilty plea, but so might other approaches.
¶18
When the evidence upon which the court must rely can be
obtained by many means that may vary in efficacy depending on the
situation, it is unnecessary and unwise to mandate one approach
to the exclusion of others. What is necessary and mandated is
that a meaningful engagement take place between the defendant and
the court. Where a meaningful engagement does not take place,
the court may well find itself unable to assemble sufficient
facts upon which to make a judgment about a defendant's ability
to enter a plea that would survive appellate review.
¶19
The specific questions identified by the court of
appeals as the minimum inquiry required when evidence of
impairment exists included questions about how much and when the
alcohol was consumed. These questions are clearly appropriate.
They may not, however, be the best questions to ask. Indeed,
responses to questions on topics unrelated to alcohol may well
provide better insights into a defendant's lucidity, as might a
blood-alcohol test, or observations of the defendant's actions
and demeanor unaided by dialogue. We therefore stop short of
imposing any suggestion of a script upon sentencing judges to use
when confronted with a potentially impaired defendant seeking to
enter a guilty plea.
No. 20041023
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¶20
Instead, we encourage judges to employ techniques of
uncovering facts relevant to a defendant's capacity to enter a
plea that are the natural product of a meaningful engagement with
that defendant. The facts elicited by these techniques will be
critical to meaningful appellate review, a review that would be
undertaken under a clearly erroneous standard. We therefore
further encourage judges to record observations of relevant
nonverbal conduct with a view toward preserving an adequate
record in those cases where a defendant's ability to enter a
knowing and voluntary plea may come into question.
¶21
We are satisfied that the circumstances surrounding the
taking of Mr. Beckstead's plea met these standards and that the
sentencing court did not abuse its discretion when it denied
Mr. Beckstead's motion to withdraw his plea. The sentencing
court conducted a thorough rule 11 colloquy. During this
colloquy, the judge interacted repeatedly with Mr. Beckstead.
The judge continued to interact with Mr. Beckstead when the issue
of his sobriety was raised. At the hearing on the motion to
withdraw the guilty plea, the judge reviewed a tape of the
hearing to revisit her firsthand observations of Mr. Beckstead's
behavior. She compared the behavior recorded on the tape with
Mr. Beckstead's behavior and demeanor at the motion hearing when
the judge knew he was sober. The sentencing judge properly
exercised her discretion when she denied Mr. Beckstead's motion
to withdraw his guilty plea, and accordingly, we reverse the
court of appeals.
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¶22
Chief Justice Durham, Associate Chief Justice Wilkins,
Justice Durrant, and Justice Parrish concur in Justice Nehring's
opinion.
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No. 20041023

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