State v. Barriga

                THE UTAH COURT OF APPEALS

                          STATE OF UTAH,
                             Appellee,
                                v.
                      JOEL SANCHEZ BARRIGA,
                            Appellant.

                             Opinion
                         No. 20210818-CA
                     Filed November 13, 2025

         Second District Court, Farmington Department
               The Honorable David J. Williams
                         No. 191700181

              Scott L. Wiggins, Attorney for Appellant
               Derek E. Brown and Jeffrey D. Mann,
                     Attorneys for Appellee

   JUDGE RYAN M. HARRIS authored this Opinion, in which
JUDGES MICHELE M. CHRISTIANSEN FORSTER and RYAN D. TENNEY
                        concurred.

HARRIS, Judge:

¶1     A jury convicted Joel Sanchez Barriga of assault by a
prisoner, and he now appeals that conviction. But he doesn’t
challenge the jury verdict itself. Instead, he asserts that the trial
court erred by denying his pretrial motion to dismiss, in which he
asserted that the Interstate Agreement on Detainers (the IAD)
compelled dismissal of his case. We disagree with Barriga’s
position, and we accordingly affirm both (a) the court’s order
denying Barriga’s motion to dismiss and (b) Barriga’s conviction.
                           State v. Barriga


                          BACKGROUND

¶2     Before January 2019, Barriga had been convicted of crimes
in both federal court and Utah state court, and he remained under
some level of supervision by each. He had just recently been
released from prison on the state charges, though he remained
under the supervision of the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole
(the Board) on those charges. After being paroled on the state
charges, however, Barriga was taken into custody by federal
authorities so that he could finish serving his sentence related to
his federal charges. After taking custody of Barriga, federal
authorities brought him to the Davis County Jail, where he was
temporarily held “by contract with the federal government.”

¶3    While at the Davis County Jail, Barriga attacked another
inmate, striking the inmate repeatedly in the face. The attack
appeared to have been motivated, at least in part, by a rivalry
between two gangs. After the altercation, federal authorities
moved Barriga to a federal facility in Colorado.

¶4     A couple of weeks later, the State of Utah—acting through
the Davis County Attorney’s Office 1 (the County)—charged
Barriga with one count of gang-enhanced assault by a prisoner, a
second-degree felony. The County asked for, and was granted, a
warrant for Barriga’s arrest; that warrant generally informed all
law enforcement officers that Barriga had been charged with
assault, and it “commanded” them to arrest Barriga and “bring
[him] before” the trial court. When the trial court asked the
County about this warrant during a hearing, the prosecutor asked
that the warrant “remain outstanding” and indicated that the
County was content to pursue the assault-by-prisoner charge
against Barriga once he was “released from federal custody.”



1. Because there are multiple state agencies involved in this case,
we elect, for clarity’s sake, to refer to each one by its specific name
rather than merely referring to them all as “the State.”


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                          State v. Barriga


¶5     But the new assault-by-prisoner charge also constituted a
potential parole violation in connection with Barriga’s previous
state convictions, and the Board chose to take a somewhat
different tack than the County. Like the County, the Board also
issued a warrant for Barriga’s arrest, which generally commanded
law enforcement officers who might encounter Barriga to arrest
him and “return[] [him] to actual custody pending a
determination whether there is probable cause to believe that [he]
has violated the conditions of his . . . parole.” But unlike the
County, the Board took an additional step: it also “placed a
detainer on [Barriga] asking the federal prison officials to return
him to [its] custody at the termination of his federal sentence.” 2

¶6     Thereafter, while still in federal custody, Barriga made
several attempts to invoke his rights under the IAD, a law that,
among other things, provides a mechanism for a prisoner to
demand to “be brought to trial within 180 days.” Utah Code § 77-
29-5 art. III. First, Barriga filed a document entitled “Request for
Final Disposition of Detainer Pursuant to Interstate Agreement on
Detainers Act.” In that document, Barriga indicated his desire to
have the case proceed quickly, and he asked the court to either
(a) order that he “be brought before the Utah Department of
Corrections to face allegations of Parole Violation within 180 days
according to the IAD” or (b) “dismiss the detainer” that the Board
had lodged “or order [the County] to dismiss” the new case.
Barriga also filed two other documents making similar requests.

¶7     The Utah Department of Corrections (the Department) and
the Board opposed Barriga’s requests, and they took the position
that the IAD does not apply to Barriga’s circumstances. They
argued, among other things, that the only detainer at issue was
the one placed by the Board related to an alleged parole violation,
and they cited caselaw indicating that the IAD does not apply to
“detainers based on parole violation charges.” The trial court

2. No actual copy of this detainer is contained in the record
submitted to us. But all parties agree that the Board issued it.


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                           State v. Barriga


agreed with the Department and the Board and denied Barriga’s
requests, concluding that the court “lack[ed] subject matter
jurisdiction to consider” requests that asked the court to alter a
sentence that had already been imposed in a different case, and
because Barriga was not invoking any of the permissible
exceptions to the general rule that a trial court’s “jurisdiction over
a criminal defendant ends upon imposition of a valid sentence
and entry of final judgment.”

¶8     Later, after his release from federal custody, Barriga filed a
motion asking the court to dismiss the new case entirely, arguing
that dismissal was warranted under the IAD because he had not
been brought to trial within 180 days after he demanded
disposition of his charge. The County responded, asserting that
the only detainer that had been placed on Barriga involved the
parole violation and that parole-violation detainers do not trigger
the protections of the IAD.

¶9      The trial court agreed with the County and denied the
motion to dismiss. Relying on Carchman v. Nash, 

(1985), the court explained that “[a]n alleged parole violation is
not an ‘untried indictment, information or complaint’” under the
IAD. (Quoting Utah Code § 77-29-5 art. III(a).) The court thus
determined that “[t]he hold put in place by the [Board] for the
parole violation does not qualify as a ‘detainer’ [under] or trigger”
the IAD. Additionally, the court determined that the County’s
arrest warrant did not qualify as a detainer under the IAD either.
From this, the court concluded that “[n]either [the Board’s] hold
for the parole violation nor the un-lodged arrest warrant issued in
this case qualif[ied] as a detainer” under the IAD and that
therefore the IAD “does [not] apply and [Barriga’s] request to
invoke it had no effect.”

¶10 The case then proceeded to trial, where a jury found
Barriga guilty of committing assault by a prisoner, with a gang
enhancement. The court later sentenced Barriga to prison.




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                          State v. Barriga


             ISSUE AND STANDARD OF REVIEW

¶11 Barriga now appeals his conviction, but he does not
challenge the merits of the jury’s verdict. Instead, he assigns error
to the court’s order denying his motion to dismiss. Specifically, he
argues that the trial court erred in concluding that the IAD had no
application here. We review a court’s “statutory interpretation for
correctness, granting no deference to the trial court’s decision.”
State v. Barney, 

, 

.


                            ANALYSIS

¶12 The IAD is an interstate “compact” between the United
States and the forty-eight individual states—including Utah—that
have chosen to enact it. Carchman v. Nash, 

 (1985);
see also Utah Code § 77-29-5. The IAD is designed to “encourage
the expeditious and orderly disposition of” various types of issues
concerning “persons already incarcerated in other jurisdictions.”
Utah Code § 77-29-5 art. I. Because the IAD is an interstate
compact, sanctioned by Congress under the Compact Clause of
the United States Constitution, see Cuyler v. Adams, 

 (1981), “the IAD is governed by federal law even though
codified as a Utah statute,” State v. Brocksmith, 

, 704–
05 (Utah Ct. App. 1994).

¶13 “[A] primary purpose of the [IAD] is to protect prisoners
against whom detainers are outstanding.” Cuyler, 

.
Prisoners may utilize specific procedures outlined in the IAD to
“demand the speedy disposition of certain charges pending
against [them] in another jurisdiction.” United States v. Mauro, 

 (1978).

¶14 But the provisions of the IAD that discuss these procedures
are triggered only after a “detainer” is issued by an agency in one
state and sent to the agency in the custodial state that is holding
the prisoner. See 

 (“[T]he provisions of the [IAD] are triggered



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                           State v. Barriga


only when a ‘detainer’ is filed with the custodial (sending) State
by another State (receiving) having untried charges pending
against the prisoner.” (emphasis added)); State v. Martin, 

 (Utah 1988) (“[A]rticle III(a) [of the IAD] clearly states
that a detainer must be lodged against the prisoner before [the
prisoner] can invoke article III protection.”); see also Utah Code
§ 77-29-5 art. III(a). A detainer “is a request filed by a criminal
justice agency with the institution in which a prisoner is
incarcerated, asking that the prisoner be held for the agency, or
that the agency be advised when the prisoner’s release is
imminent.” Fex v. Michigan, 

 (1993). Additionally,
the IAD requires that a detainer be based on an “untried
indictment, information or complaint,” Utah Code § 77-29-5 art.
III(a), which the United States Supreme Court has stated “refers
to criminal charges pending against a prisoner,” Carchman, 

. Therefore, the relevant provisions of the IAD apply
“solely to criminal charges.” 

.

¶15 If a valid detainer is lodged with the custodial state, then
the prisoner may “demand a speedy disposition of the charges
giving rise to the detainer.” Mauro, 

. To invoke this
right, the prisoner must provide “written notice of the place of
[the prisoner’s] imprisonment and [the prisoner’s] request for a
final disposition to be made of the indictment, information or
complaint.” Utah Code § 77-29-5 art. III(a). This written notice
must be given to the “warden, commissioner of corrections or
other official having custody of [the prisoner], who shall promptly
forward it together with the certificate to the appropriate
prosecuting official and court by registered or certified mail.” Id.
§ 77-29-5 art. III(b); see also Martin, 

 (holding that a
prisoner who fails to give notice to the official having custody of
[the prisoner] has not properly invoked the IAD’s protections).

¶16 And if a prisoner makes a valid demand following the
lodging of a detainer, then the state lodging the detainer must
ensure that the prisoner is “brought to trial” on the relevant
matter “within 180 days.” Utah Code § 77-29-5 art. III(a); see also


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                           State v. Barriga


Fex, 

 (holding that the 180-day period starts upon
“the receiving State’s receipt of the request”). If the state fails to
timely bring the prisoner to trial, the IAD provides a remedy: “the
appropriate court . . . shall enter an order dismissing the
[indictment, information or complaint] with prejudice, and any
detainer based thereon shall cease to be of any force or effect.”
Utah Code § 77-29-5 art. V(c).

¶17 In this case, Barriga contends that the assault-by-a-prisoner
charge should have been dismissed because, in his view, a
detainer was lodged against him, and he was not brought to trial
within 180 days of requesting a speedy disposition of the case. We
disagree: the trial court correctly concluded that a “detainer”—as
that term is used in the IAD and interpreted by the United States
Supreme Court—was never lodged against him and that,
therefore, the IAD does not apply. In addressing Barriga’s
arguments, we first explain that the arrest warrant issued by the
County was not a “detainer” as that term is used in the IAD. After
that, we assess whether the Board’s detainer qualifies as a
“detainer” under the IAD, and we conclude that it does not.

A.     The County’s Arrest Warrant

¶18 This court has already grappled with whether an arrest
warrant that is issued generally to all law enforcement officers—
but not specifically delivered to the other state’s custodial
agency—qualifies as a “detainer” under the IAD, and we
concluded that it does not. See State v. Barney, 

, 

. That case is materially indistinguishable here,
and it controls the outcome of this first question.

¶19 In Barney, the defendant attempted to invoke his rights
under the IAD after his release to a “halfway house” was canceled
when prison officials discovered that an arrest warrant had been
issued against him in another case. Id. ¶ 2. The defendant
eventually filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that “the State
violated his rights by not bringing him to trial within 180 days of



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                          State v. Barriga


his request for disposition.” Id. ¶ 4. The court denied his motion,
and this court affirmed. Id. ¶¶ 4, 11. We noted that, in interpreting
the IAD, the United States Supreme Court had “stated that ‘[a]
detainer is a request filed by a criminal justice agency with the
institution in which a prisoner is incarcerated, asking the
institution to either hold the prisoner for the agency or to notify
the agency when release of the prisoner is imminent.’” Id. ¶ 7
(quoting Carchman, 

). We also noted that the arrest
warrant in Barney had not been “sent to the [p]rison” in the
custodial state, and that “Utah officials had not requested that the
[p]rison either hold [the defendant] or inform them when his
release was imminent.” Id. ¶ 8. Instead, that warrant had simply
“been issued” several years earlier and had been discovered by
officials at the custodial prison only “by chance while searching
[a] database.” Id. ¶¶ 2, 8. Under those circumstances, we held that
the arrest warrant “did not constitute a detainer under the IAD
because it was not sent by Utah to the institution in which [the
defendant] was incarcerated.” Id. ¶ 10.

¶20 The arrest warrant issued by the County in the instant case
was likewise generally issued and was available to law
enforcement officers through databases; importantly, it was not
specifically delivered to the custodial agency in Colorado, and the
County made no request that Barriga be specifically held for
pickup by the County or even that the custodial agency notify the
County when Barriga’s release was imminent. Under the
circumstances, the County’s arrest warrant did not qualify as a
“detainer” for purposes of the IAD, and it therefore did not trigger
the protections of that statute.

B.     The Board’s Detainer

¶21 Our analysis with regard the Board’s detainer is somewhat
different, because the Board did “place[] a detainer on [Barriga]
asking the federal prison officials [in Colorado] to return him to
[its] custody at the termination of his federal sentence.” But for
different reasons, we nevertheless agree with the State’s position


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                          State v. Barriga


that this detainer likewise did not qualify as a “detainer” for
purposes of the IAD. Under the terms of the IAD, a “detainer”
must be based on an “untried indictment, information or
complaint.” Utah Code § 77-29-5 art. III(a). Interpreting this
provision, the United States Supreme Court has held that a
detainer that is based on a probation violation—even when the
probation violation in question is the commission of new crimes—
does not qualify as a “detainer” because it is not based on an
“untried indictment, information or complaint.” Carchman, 

 (cleaned up).

¶22 In Carchman, the defendant was on probation in New
Jersey when he was arrested for committing new crimes in
Pennsylvania; he was eventually tried and convicted on the new
Pennsylvania charges. 

. The Pennsylvania charges
constituted a violation of the conditions of the defendant’s New
Jersey probation and, while the defendant was awaiting trial in
Pennsylvania, the New Jersey court issued “a bench warrant”
related to the potential probation violation; that warrant “was
lodged as a detainer with the appropriate corrections officials in
Pennsylvania.” 

 at 721–22. Soon after his conviction in
Pennsylvania on the new charges, the defendant invoked the IAD
by sending “a series of letters to New Jersey officials requesting
final disposition of the probation-violation charge.” 

.
And “[t]he State of New Jersey failed to bring [the defendant] ‘to
trial’ on the probation-violation charge within 180 days after” the
defendant invoked the IAD. 

 The defendant then sought
dismissal of the probation-violation charge in New Jersey, and the
case eventually made its way to the United States Supreme Court,
where the Court framed the relevant question like this: “whether
[the IAD] applies to detainers based on probation-violation
charges.” 

. 3


3. We note here that, although the detainers in Carchman and in
this case were both supervision-violation detainers issued by the
                                                   (continued…)


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                           State v. Barriga


¶23 In its analysis, the Supreme Court first considered the
language of the IAD, explaining that the statute “by its terms
applies to detainers based on ‘any untried indictment,
information or complaint.’” Id. at 724. The Court explained that
“[t]he most natural interpretation of the words ‘indictment,’
‘information,’ and ‘complaint’ is that they refer to documents
charging an individual with having committed a criminal
offense.” Id. It then pointed out that the term “‘untried’ . . . would
seem to refer to matters that can be brought to full trial.” Id. The
Court also emphasized that the IAD’s remedy is that the
defendant must be “brought to trial within 180 days.” Id. (cleaned
up). Finally, it noted that the IAD refers to a “prosecution.” Id. at
725. From all this, the Court offered its view that “the language of
the [IAD] . . . makes clear that the phrase ‘untried indictment,
information or complaint’ . . . refers to criminal charges pending
against a prisoner.” Id. The Court thus concluded that probation-violation charges do not fall within the terms of the IAD since


court/agency with supervision over the defendant, Barriga seeks
a different remedy than the defendant in Carchman sought.
Specifically, Barriga has attempted to invoke the IAD in response
to a supervision-violation detainer with the purpose of having the
underlying criminal charges giving rise to the parole-violation
charge dismissed, whereas the defendant in Carchman—in
response to a similar detainer—attempted to have the probation-violation charges dismissed. See Carchman v. Nash, 

(1985). Neither party has briefed whether this distinction matters
in this case; without input from the parties, we wonder whether
the remedy he asks for is even theoretically available to Barriga
under these circumstances. Nevertheless, we follow the parties’
apparent lead in assuming—for purposes of our analysis only and
without deciding—that Barriga’s attempted invocation of the IAD
following a supervision-violation detainer (as opposed to a
criminal-case detainer) could theoretically lead to dismissal of the
underlying assault-by-prisoner charge (as opposed to merely the
parole-violation proceedings).


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                           State v. Barriga


those charges do “not accuse an individual with having
committed a criminal offense in the sense of initiating a
prosecution” and do “not result in the probationer’s being
‘prosecuted’ or ‘brought to trial’ for that offense.” 

 Rather, a
“probation-violation charge results in a probation-revocation
hearing.” 

¶24 This court, as well as other courts, have followed Carchman
in this regard, as they must. See id. at 719 (stating that the IAD “is
a congressionally sanctioned interstate compact” and, as such, “is
a federal law subject to federal construction”). Indeed, citing
Carchman, we have stated that the IAD “applies only to detainers
that are based on an untried indictment, information, or
complaint,” and that “[d]etainers based on alleged parole or
probation violations . . . are not based on untried charges and thus
the [IAD] is inapplicable.” State v. Kahl, 

, 1152 n.1
(Utah Ct. App. 1991); see also United States v. Romero, 

 (10th Cir. 2008) (citing Carchman and stating that the IAD “is
inapplicable to probation or parole revocation detainers”).

¶25 In this case, the trial court relied on Carchman in denying
Barriga’s motion to dismiss the case. And in our view, the court’s
reasoning was sound. The detainer lodged by the Board in this
case is functionally identical to the detainer lodged by the New
Jersey court in Carchman: both detainers were lodged by the
supervising entity in the existing case, and both alleged that the
defendant had violated the terms of his supervision by
committing new crimes. We thus agree with the trial court that
Carchman controls the second issue presented here: the Board’s
detainer—which was based on alleged violations of supervision
conditions—did not qualify as a “detainer” under the IAD.

¶26 Barriga resists this conclusion by making two arguments.
First, he points out that Carchman dealt with a probation-violation
detainer while Barriga had a parole-violation detainer lodged
against him. But this distinction is irrelevant. Like probation-violation charges, parole-violation charges do not result in the


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                           State v. Barriga


parolee being “‘prosecuted’ or ‘brought to trial’ on the criminal
offense for which [the parolee] initially was sentenced to
probation.” See Carchman, 

. Both a probation-violation charge and a parole-violation charge result in a
supervision-revocation hearing rather than a trial. See 

 We see
no principled reason to distinguish between probation-violation
detainers and parole-violation detainers in this context. Indeed,
this court has already held that the IAD is inapplicable to both
probation- and parole-violation detainers, see Kahl, 

 n.1, and Barriga does not ask us to revisit this precedent, nor
does he attempt to distinguish other cases that have rendered
similar holdings, see, e.g., Romero, 

 (stating that the
IAD “is inapplicable to probation or parole revocation
detainers”); State ex rel. Pharm v. Bartow, 

,

 (“Carchman dealt with a probationer, but we can
discern no reason why the same result would not apply to a
parolee.”), aff’d, 

, 

.

¶27 Second, Barriga attempts to distinguish Carchman on the
basis that, in Carchman, the defendant had already been convicted
on the underlying charges at the time he invoked the IAD,
whereas in this case Barriga’s new charges remained pending
when he invoked the IAD. Barriga’s assertion is correct as a
factual matter, but as the State points out, the Court in Carchman
“did not identify the timing of the prisoner’s requests as
dispositive” and instead pointed to “the type of detainer” as the
thing that mattered. Indeed, the holding in Carchman appears to
be categorical: the IAD applies only to detainers lodged by the
entity prosecuting a prisoner in another jurisdiction on an
“untried indictment, information or complaint,” and it does not
apply to detainers lodged by supervising entities alleging only
that a prisoner in another jurisdiction has violated the terms of
probation or parole, even if the underlying supervision-violation
allegation is that the prisoner has committed new crimes. See
Carchman, 473 U.S. at 725–26 (stating that “a detainer based on a
probation-violation charge is not a detainer based on ‘any untried



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                          State v. Barriga


indictment, information or complaint,’” and that this is true even
where “the probation-violation charge might be based on the
commission of a criminal offense”). 4


                          CONCLUSION

¶28 The trial court did not err in concluding that the IAD was
not triggered either by the County’s arrest warrant or by the
Board’s parole-violation detainer. We therefore reject Barriga’s
arguments and affirm both (a) the trial court’s order denying
Barriga’s motion to dismiss and (b) Barriga’s conviction.




4. Barriga also asserts that the IAD’s purposes and legislative
history compel the conclusion that the statute was intended to
apply to probation- and parole-violation detainers, at least where
the supervision violation in question stems from the commission
of new crimes. But the Court in Carchman considered the purposes
of the statute, as well as the very legislative history Barriga now
cites, and it reached a contrary conclusion. See 473 U.S. at 728–34.
And as the State correctly points out, if Barriga were right that
supervision-violation detainers based on the commission of new
offenses fell within the IAD’s ambit, Carchman would have come
out differently, since the probation-violation detainer in that case
was based on the commission of new crimes. Moreover, while the
Court in Carchman noted that probation-violation charges
“generally will be based on the criminal offense for which the
probationer already was tried and convicted and is serving [a]
sentence in the sending State,” id. at 725, we do not discern in this
statement a holding contrary to the Court’s textual analysis,
which categorically excludes probation-violation detainers from
the ambit of the IAD, id. at 726. Indeed, the Court made this
statement while expressly rejecting the legislative history and
policy arguments similar to those that Barriga makes here.


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