State v. Fleming, 454 P.3d 862

Officers arrested Carl Stanley Fleming on an outstanding warrant at a park and searched him.
Search revealed drug paraphernalia in a jacket pocket and a pill bottle with a hard white substance in Fleming’s front pants pocket; the substance proved to be cocaine.
At a pretrial suppression hearing Fleming testified the cocaine was in his girlfriend’s jacket (which he was wearing) and he did not know it was there.
The State notified it would seek to admit Fleming’s three prior drug convictions to rebut a lack-of-knowledge defense if Fleming testified.
At trial Counsel previewed Fleming’s intended testimony in opening but, after the court declined to rule in advance on admissibility of priors, advised Fleming not to testify to avoid exposing those priors to the jury.
The jury convicted Fleming; he appealed claiming ineffective assistance of counsel based on (1) advice not to testify and (2) a closing-argument point based on a misunderstanding of testimony.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether counsel’s advice that Fleming not testify was constitutionally deficient	Fleming: counsel’s advice prevented him from presenting his account and was unreasonable	Counsel/State: advice was a reasonable strategic decision to avoid admission of three prior drug convictions	No — counsel’s advice was not deficient; reasonable strategy to avoid prejudicial priors
Whether counsel’s closing argument based on a misunderstanding prejudiced Fleming	Fleming: the misstatement undermined defense and likely affected the verdict	Counsel/State: the misstatement was minor; multiple other correct arguments remained and the evidence was unchanged	No — no reasonable probability of a different outcome; no prejudice

Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (establishing the two‑prong ineffective-assistance test)
State v. Ott, 247 P.3d 344 (Utah 2010) (ineffective-assistance claim first raised on appeal is a question of law)
State v. Wilder, 420 P.3d 1064 (Utah 2018) (applying Strickland framework)
State v. Clark, 89 P.3d 162 (Utah 2004) (strong presumption that counsel’s choices reflect reasonable trial strategy)
State v. Coombs, 438 P.3d 967 (Utah App. 2019) (performance deficient only if no competent attorney would act similarly)
Menzies v. State, 344 P.3d 581 (Utah 2014) (prejudice inquiry requires a substantial likelihood of a different result)
Beverly v. State, 435 P.3d 160 (Utah 2018) (defendant bears burden to show reasonable probability of different outcome)