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Utah Supreme Court won’t let convicted cop killer withdraw guilty pleas

Posted at 10:19 AM, Nov 24, 2017
and last updated 2017-11-24 12:19:54-05

SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Supreme Court has refused to let convicted cop killer Curtis Allgier withdraw his guilty pleas in the death of a corrections officer.

Curtis Allgier at his sentencing on Dec. 5, 2012 (courtroom pool photo)

In a ruling published Thursday night, the state’s top court rejected Allgier’s attempts to undo his guilty pleas to aggravated murder, aggravated escape and robbery. Allgier is serving a life sentence for the 2007 murder of Utah Dept. of Corrections officer Stephen Anderson.

“When Mr. Allgier entered his plea, he was informed that a request to withdraw his plea must be entered before sentencing. He failed to do so and accordingly waived his right to a direct appeal,” Utah Supreme Court Chief Justice Matthew Durrant wrote.

Allgier, an inmate known for the white supremacist tattoos covering his face and body, shot and killed Anderson during an escape from a University of Utah clinic in 2007. He stole a car and led police on a chase that ended in a Salt Lake City fast-food restaurant. Five years later, Allgier struck a plea deal with prosecutors that spared him the death penalty.

But after being sentenced to life without parole in 2012, Allgier gave notice he wanted to withdraw his guilty pleas. Allgier claimed that he gave plenty of notice and the Utah Supreme Court ordered a review of prison mail records to determine if, in fact, that happened. Chief Justice Durrant wrote that the lower courts received no motions or affidavits, and the prison reported no outgoing mail for legal purposes from him.

“This court accordingly denied Mr. Allgier’s motion to supplement the record,” he wrote.

This isn’t the first time the Utah Supreme Court has rejected Allgier’s efforts to undo his conviction. They would not hear arguments from him in this appeal. In 2015, the justices took the extreme step of rejecting his right to a lawyer after detailing threats they believed he had made to his court-appointed attorneys. The Court wrote that Allgier had said:

“they [Mr. Allgier’s appointed attorneys] are the dumbest ass clowns I’ve ever had the EXTREME dishonorable displeasure of being forced to know were even somehow on the planet, let alone incompetently and ineffectively misrepresented by[,] and NEVER . . . will they have the honor of being in my Aryan GOD presence or having any kind of contact with me period!!”

Read the latest ruling from the Utah Supreme Court here: