Background
In fall 2024, Aaron Verive and his wife Amelia were divorcing after seven years of marriage. Their two young children, ages two and four, were living with Amelia at her parents’ house in South Jordan. One evening, after a family outing, Amelia drove Verive back to his Bluffdale home and agreed to come inside briefly to talk. After she declined to reconcile, Amelia tried to leave through the door to the garage. Verive stood in the way of that door and, when she said she would call the police, he held the door closed. Amelia left through a different door. As she backed her car down the driveway, Verive ran outside and stood in front of the vehicle, forcing her to reverse the length of four or five townhomes in order to exit the neighborhood a different way. The couple’s children were in the car the entire time.
Later that night, Verive drove to Amelia’s parents’ house in South Jordan—while on the phone with her—and entered uninvited into her upstairs bedroom. Amelia called 911, and Verive left only after she began speaking to the 911 operator. When police arrived at Verive’s Bluffdale residence in response to the 911 call, officers knocked on the door and made eye contact with Verive through a window, but he retreated into the interior of the home and refused to speak with them.
Bluffdale City charged Verive with four class B misdemeanors: two counts of unlawful detention (one for the garage-door incident, one for standing in front of the car) and two counts of domestic violence in the presence of a child (which depended on the unlawful detention counts, since “domestic violence” as then defined included unlawful detention). After a bench trial, the district court found Verive guilty on all counts. The court sentenced him to 180 concurrent days in jail, suspended, and placed him on one year of good-behavior probation. Verive appealed on three grounds: insufficient evidence, improper admission of the South Jordan events under Utah Rule of Evidence 404(b), and unconstitutional use of his pre-arrest silence as evidence of consciousness of guilt.
The Court’s Holding
Sufficiency of the evidence. The Court of Appeals affirmed on all three issues. As to unlawful detention under Utah Code § 76-5-304(2)(a), the court reaffirmed principles from State v. Wilder, 2016 UT App 210, and related cases. First, the unlawful detention statute contains no minimum-duration requirement; the statute is satisfied if the defendant intentionally impaired the victim’s “ability to move freely,” however briefly. Second, the existence of an alternative exit does not defeat a detention charge. Where a defendant intentionally blocks the exit the victim wishes to use in that moment, the defendant has detained or restrained her, even if another route theoretically remained available. On these facts, Verive’s physical blockage of the garage door and his standing in front of Amelia’s car each independently satisfied the statute. The domestic violence in the presence of a child counts necessarily followed.
Intrinsic evidence. As to the South Jordan events, the court held they were intrinsic to the charged Bluffdale crimes and therefore outside the scope of Rule 404(b), which prohibits only extrinsic “other acts” evidence. Under State v. Blackwing, 2025 UT 60, evidence is intrinsic when there is a “direct relationship between the act and the charged crime.” Verive’s drive to South Jordan occurred minutes after the Bluffdale incidents, while he was still on the phone with Amelia, and his uninvited entry into her bedroom continued the same course of conduct. The South Jordan events were therefore probative of Verive’s mental state during the charged acts.
Pre-arrest silence. The court held that Verive’s challenge to the use of his refusal to speak with officers was unpreserved. Defense counsel had objected at trial on relevance grounds only, never raising a constitutional objection when the prosecution argued that non-custodial, pre-Miranda silence could constitutionally be used to show consciousness of guilt. The court then reviewed for plain error and ineffective assistance of counsel, but found no prejudice under either standard. Even assuming the silence should have been excluded, the court found no reasonable likelihood of a different outcome: the trial court’s oral ruling showed that the reference to Verive’s silence came only in a brief aside after the factfinder had already concluded, based on the Bluffdale events and the South Jordan trip, that all elements of each offense had been established.
Key Takeaways
- Utah’s unlawful detention statute, Utah Code § 76-5-304(2)(a), requires no minimum duration; a momentary blocking of a doorway or standing in front of a vehicle is sufficient if the defendant intentionally impairs the victim’s freedom of movement.
- The availability of an alternative exit does not defeat an unlawful detention charge; the defendant detains or restrains the victim whenever he intentionally blocks the exit the victim actually wishes to use at that moment.
- Events occurring minutes after charged crimes—particularly events that continue or directly illuminate the defendant’s mental state during those acts—are intrinsic evidence under Rule 404(b) and may be admitted without the notice and balancing analysis applicable to extrinsic other-acts evidence.
- A constitutional challenge to the use of pre-arrest silence as consciousness-of-guilt evidence must be specifically articulated at trial; a general relevance objection does not preserve it, and the constitutional question about whether Salinas v. Texas, 570 U.S. 178 (2013), abrogated earlier Utah precedent in State v. Gallup and State v. Palmer remains open in Utah courts.
Why It Matters
Bluffdale City v. Verive clarifies two recurring issues in Utah domestic violence prosecutions. On the detention question, the decision confirms that the unlawful detention statute is a low-threshold charge that does not require extended confinement or complete blockage of all exits. Prosecutors handling restraint-based domestic violence cases should find the decision useful when the physical interference was brief or when alternative routes existed. Defense counsel, by contrast, should understand that arguing the existence of alternative exits will not be legally sufficient to defeat the charge; the relevant inquiry is whether the defendant blocked the exit the victim actually wanted to use.
On the silence question, the opinion leaves an important constitutional issue unresolved. State v. Anderson, 2020 UT App 135, previously noted that neither the Utah Court of Appeals nor the Utah Supreme Court had “squarely addressed the impact of Salinas on our precedent,” and Verive declines to do so. Criminal defense attorneys representing clients who refuse to speak with police before arrest should preserve a specific, on-the-record constitutional objection at trial—invoking the Fifth Amendment and the open question left by Salinas—rather than relying on a general relevance objection, if they wish to pursue that challenge on appeal.