[1 Michael Boudrero's body was discovered lying in the basement of a home under construction in North Logan, Utah, in July 2008. He had been shot twice, onee in the chest and once in the back. Mr. Boudrero's ex-wife, Tamra Rhinehart, pled guilty to aggravated murder for her participation in the crime that took Mr. Boudrero's life. The district сourt sentenced her to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
T2 After her sentence was imposed, Ms. Rhinehart brought this appeal. She places a *1047 sizeable catalogue of issues before us. We will speak to the merits of two of the issues. We hold that the relevant statutory requirement contained in seсtion T77-13-6-an attempt to withdraw a guilty plea on appeal must be preceded by a motion before the district court-is constitutional and has jurisdictional effect. See Utah Code Ann. § 77-13-6 (2004). We also hold that Ms. Rhine-hart waived any right to challenge her bind-over when she entered her guilty plea. Based on these holdings, we affirm the district court.
BACKGROUND
T3 Police discovered Mr. Boudrero's body lying in the basement of a vacant North Logan home still undergoing construction. Mr. Boudrero had been shot twice and left face down in the doorway of a storage room. Within a week of Mr. Boudrero's murder, police received an anonymous phone call frоm a woman who claimed to know the murderer's identity. The woman, latér identified as Marnie Christianson and Ms. Rhine-hart's hairdresser, suggested that Ms. Rhine-hart was responsible for Mr. Boudrero's death. Ms. Christianson proposed police contact Jessica Goalen, Ms. Rhinehart's former babysitter and friend who, as we shall soon see, provеd to be a source of valuable information about Ms. Rhinehart's ties to the murder. Ms. Christianson also suggested that Ms. Rhinehart had a boyfriend from South Africa who was likely involved.
T4 That boyfriend was Craig Nicholls. Ms. Rhinehart met Mr. Nicholls earlier in 2003 on the Internet. Mr. Nicholls purchased a prepaid phone card in Brigham City, Utah, called Mr. Boudrero from a pay phone, and lured Mr. Boudrero to the vacant house by indicating that he had plumbing work at the site that Mr. Boudrero might perform. When Mr. Boudrero arrived at the house that fateful July evening, Mr. Nicholls shot him. .
T5 Although Ms. Rhinehart was not present at the shooting, she had incurred sizeable debts and had persuaded Mr. Nicholls to kill Mr. Boudrero for her pecuniary gain. For months prior to the murder, Ms. Rhinehart had been trying to secure insurance policies on the life of her former husband that named herself or one of her minor children as beneficiary. When Mr. Boudrero learned about the existence of one policy, he cancelled it. Other attemрts by Ms. Rhinehart to purchase insurance on Mr. Boudrero's life failed because the applications were incomplete or because the companies determined that the size of the policies was disproportionate to Mr. Boudrero's means and therefore constituted excess coverage. A persistent Ms. Rhinehart finally succeeded in purchasing a $50,000 life insurance policy for Mr. Boudre-ro in April 2008 in which she listed herself as the beneficiary. Because the insurance company required Mr. Boudrero's signature pri- or to issuance, Ms. Rhinehart forged it. Ms. Rhinehart described these efforts to secure life insurancе and the plan to kill her former husband to Ms. Goalen, who later recounted the information to police.
6 Police arrested Mr. Nicholls. He later pled guilty to aggravated murder and in accordance with his plea agreement, provided police with a sworn statement regarding his and Ms. Rhinehart's participation in Mr. Boudrero's murder. Mr. Nicholls agreed to testify against Ms. Rhinehart. (We considered an improperly brought challenge to his guilty plea in State v. Nicholls,
7 In light of these events and associated evidence, the State charged Ms. Rhinchart with one count of aggravated murder, a capital felony in violation of Utah Code sеction 76-5-202; one count of forgery, a third degree felony in violation of section 76-6-501; and four counts of communications fraud, a second degree felony in violation of section 76-10-1801. In a separate information, the State charged Ms. Rhinehart with one count of burglary, a second degree felony in violation of section 76-6-202; three counts of theft, a second degree felony in violation of section 76-6-404; and another count of communications fraud.
18 The district court held a single preliminary hearing where both Mr. Nicholls and Ms. Goalen invoked their rights against self-incrimination and refused to testify against Ms. Rhinehart. Instead, the district court *1048 admitted Mr. Nicholls's and Ms. Goalen's sworn statements into evidence. After being bound over on all charges, Ms. Rhinehart unsuccessfully moved to quash the bindover order at the preliminary hearing on the grounds that admission of hearsay violated her rights under the Confrontation Clause of the United States Constitution.
T9 The burglary and aggravated murder cases were ultimately severed. Ms. Rhine-hart was convicted in the burglary case, which proceeded first. She pled guilty nearly three months later to aggravated murder in exchange for the State's agreement to drop all other charges and to refrain from seeking the death penalty. Ms. Rhinehart appeals from this plea.
ANALYSIS
I. WE LACK JURISDICTION TO CONSIDER MS. RHINEHARTS CHALLENGE TO THE LAWFULNESS OF HER GUILTY PLEA
$10 Thе Utah Constitution mandates that all criminal defendants be afforded the right of appeal. Utah Const. art. I, § 12; see Manning v. State,
{11 Ms. Rhinehart contends that the ineffectiveness of her trial counsel caused her to enter her plea and to fail to bring a timely motion to withdraw it. Under these circumstances, Ms. Rhinehart insists, the requirement contained in section 77-13-6 that she move to withdraw her guilty plea as a condition to challenging her plea on direct appeal unconstitutionally deprives her of her right to appeal.
1 12 Mindful that in State v. Merrill,
113 It does not. The ineffectiveness of a defendant's counsel may take many forms and result in relieving а criminal defendant of an undesirable result. The ineffectiveness of counsel that contributes to a flawed guilty plea, however, can spare a defendant the consequences of her plea only if the defendant makes out the same case required of every defendant who seeks to withdraw a plеa: that the plea was not knowing and voluntary. See State v. West,
114 The classifiсation within which she seeks refuge-that defendants who seek leave to withdraw pleas based on claims of ineffective assistance of counsel are free of the constraints of section 77-183-6-is, therefore, a phantom classification. To honor this classification would be to invite every tardy application to withdraw a plea to be styled as a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, a consequence that would vitiate section T7-13-6. We therefore hold that claims of ineffece-tive assistance of counsel raised in the context of challenges to the lawfulness of guilty pleas arе governed by section 77-18-6 as construed by Merrill and confirmed by Grimmett. We therefore are without jurisdiction to consider Ms. Rhinehart's claim.
II. MS. RHINEHART WAIVED HER RIGHT TO CHALLENGE DEFECTS IN HER BINDOVER WHEN SHE ENTERED HER GUILTY PLEA
$15 Ms. Rhinehart next asks us to relieve her of the effect of her guilty plea because her preliminary hearing and bind-over were infected with errors. Except in those instances in which errors affеct the court's jurisdiction or where claims of error are expressly preserved for appeal, a convietion or guilty plea acts as a waiver of earlier procedural flaws. See, eg., Benvenuto v. State,
16 Ms. Rhinehart attempts to avoid falling prey tо the general rule in two ways. First, she asserts that she did not enter a knowing and voluntary guilty plea and therefore could not have waived defects in the preliminary hearing and bindover. Next, she insists that even if her plea were lawful, it is not the preliminary hearing and bindover itself with which she takes issue, but rather with constitutional deprivations оf her right to confront witnesses at the preliminary hearing. She argues that since those constitutional defects are jurisdictional and not subject to waiver, we must take up their merits. We disagree.
T 17 We may with dispatch dispose of Ms. Rhinehart's reinvocation of her challenge to the lawfulness of her plea. Put simply, she cannot achieve through a challenge to the bindover what she was foreclosed from doing by section 77-18-6-assail the lawfulness of her plea.
{18 We turn, then, to Ms. Rhinehart's claim that she was deprived of constitutional rights in the preliminary hearing and that these transgressions stripped the court of jurisdiction. We note at the outset thаt the Utah Constitution expressly permits the waiver of a preliminary hearing "by the accused with the consent of the State." Utah Const. art. I, § 18. In light of this provision, it is difficult for us to conceive of why a constitutionally authorized waiver of a preliminary hearing would be foreclosed by the existence of defects, even constitutiоnal defects, that occurred during the hearing. Of course, as Ms. Rhinehart properly notes, she never expressly waived her right to a preliminary hearing and, in fact, fought to exhaustion to prevail on her claims of preliminary hearing error. The fact that she put up a stern fight does not mean that she could not have surrendered and expressly waived her constitutional challenges by waiving her preliminary hearing. In our view, the entry of Ms. Rhinehart's guilty plea achieved the same waiver of her constitutional claims as a waiver of her preliminary hearing would have accomplished.
*1050
119 Finally, we find little merit in Ms. Rhinebart's claim that the alleged deniаl of her right to confront witnesses at the preliminary hearing implicated the subject matter jurisdiction of the court and was, therefore, immune from waiver. Without subject matter jurisdiction, a court is powerless to adjudicate a case. See United States v. Cotton,
120 We have held that a district court is empowered to conduct a trial in the wake of an allegedly flawed bindover because a subsequent conviction beyond a reasonable doubt cures any bindover defect. State v. Winfield,
III. MS. RHINEHART FAILED TO PRESERVE THE OTHER ISSUES FOR APPEAL
T21 Ms. Rhinehart has asked us to take up the merits of her challenges to the manner in which the penalty phase of her proceeding was conducted and to the constitutionality of Utah's life without parole statute. See Utah Code Ann. § 76-3-207(5) (2004). These issues werе not preserved below. Because they were not, we will not consider them absent plain error or exeep-tional cireumstances. See State v. Holgate,
CONCLUSION
1 22 Because Ms. Rhinehart failed to make a timely motion to withdraw her guilty plea as required by statute, we lack jurisdiction to consider the validity of her plea on apрeal. Ms. Rhinechart's ineffective assistance of counsel claim cannot successfully evade this well-established jurisdictional bar. We further hold that Ms. Rhinchart waived the right to challenge the validity of her bindover when she entered a guilty plea. We decline to address the merits of Ms. Rhinehart's remaining unpreserved issues. Accordingly, we affirm the district court.