Utah Supreme Court hears argument over whether insufficiency reversal bars new restitution hearing

The Utah Supreme Court heard oral argument in State v. Blake on whether a Court of Appeals reversal for insufficient evidence precludes the district court from holding a new restitution hearing on remand.

Dallas Young, attorney for Shawn Blake, told the court, “There’s an elephant in the room that needs to be addressed,” arguing that if the state may repeatedly present insufficient evidence, be reversed on appeal and then try again, “we are left with no limiting principle” that would stop the state from relitigating restitution repeatedly.

Young urged the justices to treat a sufficiency reversal differently from other reversals, saying that in the sufficiency context the factfinder has already had a “fair hearing” and a second opportunity to present the same claim would violate the ordinary finality that gives litigants a single fair shot. He pointed to the criminal double-jeopardy analogy and said that, absent explicit statutory language to the contrary, the legislature’s use of the word “hearing” suggests a single, finite proceeding.

Daniel Day, counsel for the State, argued the opposite: the district court had discretion to hold a second hearing after the Court of Appeals reversed the restitution award. “The sentencing court did not abuse its discretion by holding a second hearing and, considering the evidence that wasn’t considered the first time that the court of appeals said should have been,” Day said, noting Utah precedent about remittitur and the district court regaining jurisdiction after reversal.

A central dispute at argument was how to treat the Court of Appeals’ disposition in Blake I.…