State v. Thomas

               THE UTAH COURT OF APPEALS

                        STATE OF UTAH,
                           Appellee,
                               v.
                      CORY JASON THOMAS,
                          Appellant.

                             Opinion
                        No. 20230910-CA
                      Filed August 28, 2025

           Second District Court, Ogden Department
                 The Honorable Noel S. Hyde
                        No. 211900875

         Hannah Leavitt-Howell and Jessica Hyde Holzer,
                   Attorneys for Appellant
           Christopher F. Allred and Benjamin Gabbert,
                     Attorneys for Appellee

   JUDGE RYAN M. HARRIS authored this Opinion, in which
 JUDGES MICHELE M. CHRISTIANSEN FORSTER and AMY J. OLIVER
                        concurred.

HARRIS, Judge:

¶1     A jury convicted Cory Jason Thomas of failure to stop at
the command of a law enforcement officer, interference with a law
enforcement officer, and obstruction of justice. The charges
stemmed from an interaction between Thomas and a police officer
who was in the process of arresting Thomas’s girlfriend. Thomas
now appeals his convictions, challenging the trial court’s decision
to sustain an objection to a question his attorney wanted to ask
during cross-examination of the officer, and asserting that the
court plainly erred by telling the jury that the charged offenses
were misdemeanors. For the reasons discussed, we reject
Thomas’s arguments and affirm his convictions.
                          State v. Thomas


                        BACKGROUND 1

¶2      At the time of the events in question, Thomas was in a
relationship with a woman (Girlfriend) who was on parole and
was considered a “parole fugitive.” Police officers were actively
attempting to apprehend Girlfriend, and one officer (Officer) had
noticed that Girlfriend’s car was parked at Thomas’s residence.
Eventually, Officer observed Girlfriend get into her car and begin
to drive away from Thomas’s house, but before she got very far,
she crashed into a “brick partition” on Thomas’s property and
came to a stop. At that point, Officer activated his emergency
lights and began the process of arresting Girlfriend: he put her in
handcuffs, searched her, and placed her in his police car.

¶3       Girlfriend then called out for Thomas, “yelling” for him to
come outside. When Thomas emerged from the house, Officer
first asked him if he wanted police “to take any action” regarding
Girlfriend damaging the brick partition, and Thomas answered in
the negative. Girlfriend then “began yelling” for Thomas to “grab
. . . her purse out of the car.” Officer “instructed [Thomas] not to
do so, to not touch the car or anything in it.” Thomas then walked
toward the car, prompting Officer to repeat the instruction
“several times.” Thomas continued to ignore that admonition,
and he proceeded to “pull[] [Girlfriend’s] purse out of the” car.

¶4    At this point, Officer moved toward Thomas, “knocked the
purse out of his hand,” and informed Thomas that “he was now
under arrest for obstruction.” As Officer was placing Thomas
under arrest, Thomas resisted and started to walk “a short


1. “In an appeal from a jury trial, we review the record facts in a
light most favorable to the jury’s verdict and recite the facts
accordingly, and we present conflicting evidence only as
necessary to understand issues raised on appeal.” State v.
Broadwater, 

, 

 (cleaned up), cert.
denied, 

 (Utah 2025).


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                           State v. Thomas


distance” away from Officer. Thomas turned back and faced
Officer, at which point Officer “pulled out [his] departmentissued taser.” Thomas then “ran up his front steps and went into
his house.” At some point that day, law enforcement personnel
searched Girlfriend’s purse, but they found no contraband.

¶5      Later, the State filed three criminal charges against Thomas
related to this incident: failure to stop at the command of a law
enforcement officer, a class A misdemeanor; interference with an
arresting officer, a class B misdemeanor; and obstructing justice,
a class A misdemeanor.

¶6      The case proceeded to a jury trial. After the jury was
selected but before the presentation of evidence, the trial court
issued an initial set of instructions to the jury. During that process,
the court read the charging document to the jury, and in so doing,
the court told the jury the level of each charged offense. In
particular, the court stated that Thomas had been charged with
“Count I, failure to stop at the command of a law-enforcement
officer, a Class A misdemeanor,” “Count II, interference with an
arresting officer, a Class B misdemeanor,” and “Count III,
obstructing justice, a Class A misdemeanor.” Just a minute or two
later, in reading its preliminary instructions, the court repeated
the offenses and their classifications, again telling the jury, “The
defendant is charged with the crimes of failure to stop at the
command of a law-enforcement officer, a Class A misdemeanor;
interference with an arresting officer, a Class B misdemeanor; and
obstructing justice, a Class A misdemeanor.”

¶7     Thereafter, the State presented its case-in-chief, and it
called Officer as its only witness; he testified to the events as
described above. In addition, Officer described the process for
searches incident to arrest, as well as his department’s policies for
impounding a car and conducting an inventory search of the car.
Officer testified that a search incident to arrest consists of “a
search of [an arrestee’s] person” as well as “any purses or



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                          State v. Thomas


backpacks” the arrestee has “on them.” Officer stated that after
such a search is conducted, the arrestee is “secure[d] in [the]
patrol vehicle.” Officer then testified that, in this situation, he
planned to “impound [Girlfriend’s] vehicle” after he placed her in
the patrol car. Officer explained that, as part of the impound
process, his department had a set of “rules put in place by the
State that law enforcement has to follow” and that “[o]ne [rule] is
an inventory of the vehicle and what’s inside the vehicle.” Officer
testified that his plans to impound the vehicle and inventory its
contents were “why [he] instructed [Thomas] not to take anything
out of the vehicle.”

¶8     On cross-examination, Thomas’s counsel (Counsel) asked
Officer questions about searching Girlfriend upon her arrest. As
relevant here, Counsel asked whether, “since [Girlfriend] was
already under arrest and in [Officer’s] vehicle, [Officer] didn’t
have a right to search the vehicle as a search incident to arrest.”
(Emphasis added.) The State objected on relevance grounds,
prompting a sidebar conference. Counsel clarified that his
purpose in asking the question was “to show that . . . [Officer]
couldn’t have searched [Girlfriend’s] purse incident to arrest” and
that, therefore, “it’s not obstruction of justice to remove the
purse.” The State responded by arguing that whether Officer had
a legal right to search the purse was irrelevant to the issue of
whether Thomas “attempted to obstruct by removing the purse.”
During the discussion, the court asked, “[I]sn’t that a legal
question?,” to which the State answered in the affirmative. But
Counsel asserted that “it’s a question of fact too” because “[i]t is
relevant as to whether there is an obstruction of justice by
removing the purse” and that “[i]f it’s not evidence, then it’s not
obstruction of justice.” After the sidebar, the court sustained the
State’s objection, offering its view that Counsel’s question asked
Officer to answer “a question of law.” Counsel then went on to
question Officer about the impoundment and inventory process,
and Officer clarified that, after an inventory of the car is
conducted, the “property will go to the property owner.” On



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                           State v. Thomas


redirect, the State asked if an officer could “allow[] someone to
take custody of another’s property,” to which Officer responded
that this was possible but that it’s “up to [the] officer’s discretion.”
The State then rested, and Thomas chose not to testify.

¶9     At the conclusion of evidence, the court gave additional
instructions to the jury. In one of those instructions, the court told
the jury that “the subject of penalty or punishment is not to be
discussed or considered by you and must not in any way affect
your verdict.”

¶10 After deliberation, the jury found Thomas guilty on all
three charges. Later, the court sentenced Thomas to jail, but it
suspended all but seven days (already served) of that sentence
and placed Thomas on probation, subject to conditions.


             ISSUES AND STANDARDS OF REVIEW

¶11 Thomas now appeals his convictions, and he raises two
issues for our review. First, with regard to his conviction for
obstruction of justice, he challenges the trial court’s decision to
sustain the State’s objection to Counsel’s question—put to Officer
on cross-examination—about whether Officer had a “right” to
search Girlfriend’s vehicle as a search incident to arrest. “When
reviewing a trial court’s decision to limit cross-examination, we
review the legal rule applied for correctness and the application
of the rule to the facts of the case for an abuse of discretion.” State
v. Eddington, 

, 

 (cleaned up).

¶12 Second, with regard to all three convictions, Thomas
challenges the court’s decision to tell the jury that the crimes with
which he was charged were misdemeanor offenses. Thomas
acknowledges that this issue is unpreserved, and he asks us to
review it for plain error, which is an exception to our preservation
requirement. See State v. Popp, 

, 

. Because a plain error claim “involves no lower court ruling,



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                           State v. Thomas


we decide the claim in the first instance as a matter of law.” State
v. Dew, 

, 

, cert. denied, 

 (Utah 2025).


                            ANALYSIS

            I. Ruling Sustaining the State’s Objection

¶13 With regard to the court’s ruling sustaining the State’s
objection to Counsel’s question during cross-examination,
Thomas asserts that this ruling prevented him from adequately
presenting his defense that “he lacked the necessary mens rea to
commit obstruction” of justice. For the reasons discussed, we
discern no abuse of discretion in the court’s decision to sustain the
State’s objection to the specific question posed.

¶14 To convict Thomas of obstruction of justice, the State had
to prove that Thomas took at least one of several enumerated
actions, including “remov[ing] an item,” and that he did so “with
intent to hinder, delay, or prevent the investigation,
apprehension, prosecution, conviction, or punishment of any
person.” Utah Code § 76-8-306(2). 2 Thomas argues that the line of
questioning Counsel was posing to Officer was intended to elicit
evidence about whether Girlfriend’s purse was “part of the
current investigation” Officer was conducting, a fact he asserts is
relevant to whether he had the requisite “intent to delay or hinder
an investigation.”

¶15 We can certainly see how questioning Officer about his
investigative plans would bear on Thomas’s intent. After all, if


2. This statute was amended in 2024 and, as a result, some of the
subsection numbers changed. Compare Utah Code § 76-8-306
(2025), with id. § 76-8-306 (2021). But because the relevant statutory
language remained unchanged from 2021, we cite the current
version for convenience.


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                          State v. Thomas


Officer didn’t intend to ever search the vehicle or the purse, and
Thomas was aware of that, then Thomas’s efforts to take the purse
out of the car might not have been intended to thwart a law
enforcement investigation. So questions about Officer’s
investigatory plans, and about Thomas’s knowledge of those
plans, were relevant to whether Thomas had obstructed justice.

¶16 But the question that drew the State’s objection was far
more specific than that. Counsel asked Officer for his opinion
about whether he “ha[d] a right to search the vehicle as a search
incident to arrest.” (Emphasis added.) With that question,
Counsel wasn’t asking Officer about the scope of his intended
investigation, nor was he asking Officer anything about Thomas’s
state of mind regarding the investigation. Counsel asked only
whether Officer had the right to search the vehicle pursuant to one
specific legal doctrine: a search incident to arrest. This question
was objectionable, for two related reasons.

¶17 First, it asked for a legal conclusion. “Under Utah case law,
a witness may not testify to a legal conclusion.” State v. Brown,

, 

, petition for cert. filed, July 2,
2025 (No. 20250740). “[W]itnesses give improper legal
conclusions when they couch their opinions as legal conclusions,
tie their opinions to the requirements of Utah law, or otherwise
tell the jury what conclusion to reach.” Id. ¶ 18. The facts in Brown
are illustrative of the limitations of permissible testimony. In that
case, this court determined that a detective’s testimony that the
defendant’s actions constituted criminal mischief rather than
aggravated assault was an impermissible legal conclusion. Id.
¶¶ 20–21. In making our decision, we noted that the detective’s
testimony was improper because it “instruct[ed] the jury on the
correct legal resolution of issues within” the law. Id. ¶ 21.

¶18 Here, Counsel phrased the question in terms of whether
Officer had a “right” to search Girlfriend’s car incident to her
arrest. This question called on Officer to evaluate the legal limits



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                          State v. Thomas


of the search-incident-to-arrest doctrine and offer an opinion to
the jury about whether he had the legal authority to conduct that
type of search at that time. Thus, the question called for an
impermissible legal conclusion because it required Officer to “tie
[his] opinions to the requirements of [the] law.” Id. ¶ 18.

¶19 Second, and relatedly, the question sought information
that was not directly relevant to the issue at hand. What mattered
here was whether, by removing Girlfriend’s purse from the car,
Thomas intended to “hinder, delay, or prevent the investigation,
apprehension, prosecution, conviction, or punishment” of
Girlfriend. Utah Code § 76-8-306(2). And as noted above, matters
relevant to that inquiry include Officer’s investigatory plans and
Thomas’s state of mind. But one thing that is not relevant to that
inquiry is whether Officer had the legal right to search the purse
incident to his arrest of Girlfriend. A person can be guilty of
obstruction of justice even if the investigation the person
intentionally hinders turns up no criminal activity at all. See State
v. Paule, 

, ¶¶ 52–58, 

 (“Whether the
defendant’s—or any other person’s—conduct was actually the
actus reus of a criminal offense has no bearing on the defendant’s
intent to obstruct justice.”). Similarly, a person can be guilty of
obstruction of justice even if the part of the investigation the
person intentionally hinders is later deemed to have involved an
unlawful search. Stated another way, if Thomas believed that
Officer was about to search the purse as part of his investigation
of Girlfriend, and if Thomas removed the purse from the car in an
effort to hinder that investigation, then Thomas is guilty of
obstruction of justice even if a court were to later determine that
Officer’s search of the purse was unlawful. In this vein, we note
that it would have been Girlfriend—and not Thomas—who
would have had standing to challenge the legality of any search
of the purse. See State v. Oryall, 

, 

(noting that, to challenge the legality of a search, an individual
must “demonstrate a legitimate expectation of privacy in the area
searched” (cleaned up)); see also Alderman v. United States, 

-CA                     8               

                          State v. Thomas


165, 174 (1969) (“Fourth Amendment rights are personal rights
which . . . may not be vicariously asserted.”).

¶20 Moreover, even if the legality of the search were somehow
relevant here, a question about whether Officer had the right to
search Girlfriend’s purse as part of a search incident to arrest does
not necessarily bear on whether Officer had the right to search the
purse generally, pursuant to some other legal doctrine. Indeed,
Officer implied, during his testimony, that he intended to search
the purse as part of an inventory search of the impounded vehicle,
not as a search incident to Girlfriend’s arrest. And—
significantly—Thomas does not even begin to grapple with the
question of whether Officer would have had the right to search
Girlfriend’s purse in any event, given that Girlfriend was a parole
fugitive. See Samson v. California, 

 (2006) (“[T]he
Fourth Amendment does not prohibit a police officer from
conducting a suspicionless search of a parolee.”).

¶21 Accordingly, the specific question Counsel posed was
indeed objectionable, and on this record the trial court did not
abuse its discretion by sustaining the State’s objection. That is not
to say, however, that Counsel’s entire line of questioning was
impermissible. Counsel certainly could have probed Officer—
without asking him to provide an opinion on whether he had the
right to search pursuant to a particular legal doctrine—about
whether Officer intended to search the purse as part of his
investigation. Indeed, Counsel did ask other questions aimed at
these issues; in particular, Counsel questioned Officer about his
department’s inventory search policies and about whether (and
when) a detained individual would be able to receive personal
property following an impound inventory of a vehicle. We note
that Counsel could have made further inquiries along these lines,
and we observe that Thomas does not assert, here on appeal, that
the trial court otherwise improperly hindered that effort.




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                            State v. Thomas


¶22 But what we are asked to consider here is whether the trial
court abused its discretion in sustaining the State’s objection to a
particular question. And because that question asked for a legal
conclusion and sought irrelevant information, the court did not
abuse its discretion in sustaining the objection. We therefore reject
Thomas’s first argument.

          II. Jury Instructions Regarding Offense Levels

¶23 Next, Thomas challenges the trial court’s decision to tell the
jury that the crimes with which Thomas was charged were
misdemeanor offenses. Thomas acknowledges that this challenge
is not preserved for our review on appeal, and so he asks us to
review it for plain error, one of the exceptions to our preservation
rules. See State v. Popp, 

, 

. “To
prevail on plain error review, a defendant must establish that
(i) an error exists; (ii) the error should have been obvious to the
trial court; and (iii) the error is harmful, i.e., absent the error, there
is a reasonable likelihood of a more favorable outcome for the
appellant.” State v. Cesspooch, 

, 

(cleaned up), cert. denied, 

 (Utah 2024).

¶24 In this situation, the State does not contest Thomas’s
assertion that the trial court committed obvious error and that
therefore the first two elements of plain error are met here. But the
State asserts that Thomas’s plain error claim falters on the third
element, because Thomas cannot demonstrate any reasonable
likelihood of a more favorable result if the jury had not been told
that the crimes at issue were misdemeanors. For the reasons
discussed, we agree with the State.

¶25 “Punishment is not a proper matter for jury consideration.”
State v. Garcia, 

 (cleaned up). Under our law,
it is usually error for a trial court to tell the jury about the severity
of a given offense (e.g., felony or misdemeanor, or which level of
felony or misdemeanor). See 

 And we have previously held—
several times—that the law on this point is clear enough that this


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                           State v. Thomas


sort of error is considered “obvious” for purposes of plain error
analysis. See 

 (“Informing the jury of a classification of an
offense is an obvious error because the classification of an offense
is directly tied to its punishment and punishment is not a proper
matter for jury consideration.” (cleaned up)); State v. Williams,

 (concluding that the trial court “obviously
erred” when it informed the jury of the classification and potential
punishment of the charged offense); Cesspooch, 

 (“Since sentencing was the court’s prerogative and not the
jury’s, we conclude that the court committed obvious error by
instructing the jury about these classifications.”). Accordingly, the
court committed obvious error here, and we must therefore assess
whether that error prejudiced Thomas.

¶26 To make the necessary showing of prejudice, Thomas must
demonstrate that “absent the error, there is a reasonable
likelihood of a more favorable outcome.” Cesspooch, 

 (cleaned up). “Prejudice analysis is counterfactual. To
decide whether a trial affected by error is reasonably likely to have
turned out differently we have to consider a hypothetical—an
alternative universe in which the trial went off without the error.”
State v. Ellis, 

, 

; see also Cesspooch, 

 (stating that, in this context, we must “ask[]
whether we remain confident that the verdict would be the same
had the improper information been excluded” (cleaned up)); State
v. Soto, 

, 

 (“Under a
counterfactual analysis, we consider whether, in the absence of
the improperly admitted evidence, the likelihood of a different
outcome is sufficiently high to undermine our confidence in the
verdict.” (cleaned up)).

¶27 Thomas asserts that he was prejudiced because, after being
told that the crimes in question were misdemeanors, “jurors knew
that” the crimes were “not as serious as a felony offense,” and he
posits that this knowledge “made it tempting to convict on
weaker evidence, because the jury reasonably knew that



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                         State v. Thomas


punishment would be less for less-serious charges.” He
characterizes the evidence against him as “not overwhelming,”
and he theorizes that the jury’s knowledge that the crimes were
misdemeanors must have been a material factor in its decision to
convict him. We see things differently.

¶28 As an initial matter, the evidence against Thomas on at
least two of the charges—for failure to stop at the command of a
law enforcement officer and interference with a law enforcement
officer—was indeed overwhelming. Officer testified clearly and
without contradiction that Thomas disobeyed his command not
to remove Girlfriend’s purse from the car; that Thomas resisted
Officer’s attempts to place him under arrest; and that Thomas
“ran up his front steps and went into his house” after Officer
pulled out his taser. Counsel did not meaningfully cross-examine
Officer on these points, and Thomas did not offer any evidence to
the contrary. And in closing argument, Counsel did not argue that
these events did not happen as Officer described. We therefore
have no difficulty concluding that Thomas has failed to
demonstrate any reasonable likelihood of a different result on
these two charges.

¶29 The question is somewhat closer with regard to the
obstruction of justice charge, but in the end we reach the same
result, guided by our recent decisions in Cesspooch, Garcia, and
Williams. In Cesspooch, this court determined that the defendant
was not prejudiced when the court read the classifications of the
charged offenses to the jury, in part because the statements were
“somewhat buried” in the middle of an instruction and no parties
emphasized the classifications as “the focus of any argument.”

. Based in part on these facts, we concluded
that there was “little reason to believe that the jury was focused
on these classifications when it deliberated in this case.” 

¶30 Similarly, in Garcia, we held that informing the jury, at the
beginning of the trial, that the defendant was charged with first-



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                          State v. Thomas


degree felonies did not prejudice the defendant. 

. As in Cesspooch, the classifications were presented one time
and were part of another instruction explaining the elements of
the charged crimes. Id. ¶ 42. And we emphasized that, even
though the court and defense counsel agreed that it was “unlikely
that the jury would recall the offense classifications from the
beginning of trial,” the jury was also instructed that it was “to not
consider punishment” in its deliberation, further mitigating any
risk of prejudice. Id.

¶31 And in Williams, the trial court informed the jury not only
of the classification of the charged offense but also that the
defendant “faced a sentence of five years to life if convicted.” 

. There, the court engaged in a somewhat indepth discussion, during jury selection, about the charge and its
associated penalty, stating as follows:

       This is not a capital murder case, this is not one in
       which the Defendant upon a finding of guilty could
       be sentenced to death. This is a case in which the
       penalty, which you are not to be concerned with,
       would be that of five years to life in the Utah State
       prison. It is a first-degree felony.

Id. ¶ 15. As in Garcia, the jurors in Williams were instructed not to
consider possible punishment; indeed, they were specifically told
not to “discuss [or] consider the subject of penalty or punishment”
and that “[t]he penalty and punishment for the crime charged
must not in any way affect [their] decision as to the guilt or
innocence of the defendant.” Id. ¶ 39. On those facts, we
determined, as part of a broader cumulative error analysis, that
informing the jury of the classification and possible sentence did
not prejudice the defendant. Id. We noted the “strong evidence”
the State had introduced indicating the defendant’s guilt. Id. ¶ 41.
And we observed that, even if an objection had been raised to the
court’s statements about offense severity, the “trial court likely



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                           State v. Thomas


would have given the potential jurors an instruction to not
concern themselves with the possible punishment and [would
have] included a jury instruction stating the same, which is
exactly what happened” anyway. Id. ¶ 39.

¶32 The facts of this case are similar, in important ways, to the
facts of Cesspooch, Garcia, and Williams. As in Garcia and Cesspooch,
the jury heard about offense severity not in isolation but as part of
a broader statement providing preliminary information about the
case. As in Cesspooch, no party so much as mentioned the offense
classifications again. And as in Garcia and Williams, jurors
received a specific and separate instruction informing them that
“the subject of penalty or punishment is not to be discussed or
considered . . . and must not in any way affect [the] verdict.” If
anything, the potential for prejudice is less present here than it
was in Williams, where the court not only mentioned the offense
severity but also told the jury what the potential sentence would
be following a conviction, see id. ¶ 15; in this case, the jury was
never told what the specific sentencing range would be.

¶33 Moreover, although the evidence in the State’s favor on the
obstruction of justice charge was perhaps not quite as clear-cut as
on the other charges, that evidence was still quite compelling. The
evidence certainly allowed for a reasonable inference that Thomas
knew that Girlfriend had a significant criminal history and was a
parole fugitive. While no contraband was found in Girlfriend’s
purse, no evidence was presented indicating that Thomas knew
that at the time he took the purse from the car. Thus, the evidence
clearly supported a reasonable inference that Thomas’s intent in
taking the purse from the car involved hindering an investigation
of Girlfriend for parole violations or other criminal activity. In the
end, given the totality of the circumstances presented here, we are
simply not convinced that the jury’s knowledge regarding the
severity of the charges against Thomas played a significant role in
its determination to find Thomas guilty of obstruction of justice.
Because Thomas has not made the necessary showing of



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                         State v. Thomas


prejudice, we reject Thomas’s claim that the trial court committed
plain error in informing the jury that the crimes at issue were
misdemeanors.


                         CONCLUSION

¶34 The trial court did not abuse its discretion in sustaining the
State’s objection to Counsel’s question. And although the trial
court obviously erred in telling the jury the classifications of
Thomas’s charges, Thomas has not demonstrated that he was
prejudiced by the error. Accordingly, we reject Thomas’s
appellate arguments and affirm his convictions.




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