ROTH, Judge:
¶ 1 Defendant Patrick Moreau appeals his sentences for several drug-related convictions, arguing that the district court abused its discretion in sentencing him to concurrent prison terms rather than probation. We affirm.
¶ 2 The convictions for which Moreau was sentenced stem from three separate episodes. The first episode (the prescription fraud offenses) occurred in July 2007. Moreau made numerous copies of a prescription for pain killers that was originally issued to
¶ 3 The second episode (the forgery offense) occurred in January 2009, while Moreau was still participating in drug court. Since entering the drug court program, Moreau had repeatedly violated the terms of the plea in abeyance agreement by, for example, failing urinalyses, missing treatment appointments, and consuming alcohol. The district court followed up each violation with punishments of jail time and community service and eventually imposed a jail sentence allowing release time only for work or school. In an effort to gain more release time, Moreau convinced his mother to forge a professor's signature on a class schedule. For this conduct, Moreau was convicted of one count of possession of a forged writing, see Utah Code Ann. § 76-6-502 (2008), a third degree felony. At sentencing, the district court suspended the prison term for the forgery offense and placed Moreau on probation, requiring him to serve a one-year jail sentence with work release.
¶ 4 The third episode (the possession offenses) occurred in April 2009, after Moreau was booked into jail for failing to report for a court-mandated urinalysis. Once in his cell, the jail staff saw Moreau turn his back and put something in his mouth. When the jail staff entered the cell and confronted Moreau about his suspicious behavior, he denied putting anything in his mouth. The jail staff then ordered Moreau to the ground and a syringe fell from his person to the floor and another syringe was discovered in his underwear. The jail staff then transported Moreau to the hospital, believing that he had swallowed narcotics. At the hospital, Moreau engaged in a series of actions intended to prevent medical personnel from discovering that he had ingested drugs, culminating in an attempt to flush drugs he had regurgitated down a toilet. Despite his efforts, a nurse saw a plastic baggie in the toilet, which Moreau later admitted contained heroin and Klonopin.
¶ 5 Due to Moreau's steady accumulation of criminal offenses as well as his repeated violations of the plea in abeyance agreement and drug court rules, the district court terminated Moreau's participation in drug court and entered his guilty pleas from the prescription fraud offenses that had originally been held in abeyance. The court sentenced Moreau to terms of zero to five years on each of the third degree felonies arising from the prescription fraud offenses and the possession offenses—a total of twelve third degree felonies—and to one to fifteen years on the single second degree felony arising from the possession offenses. The district court also revoked Moreau's probation on the forgery offense and imposed the zero to five year prison sentence. The district court ordered that all the prison terms run concurrently. Moreau now appeals the district court's sentencing decisions.
¶ 6 The district court is "afford[ed]. . . wide latitude in sentencing," and a sentencing decision will not be reversed unless there has been "an abuse of the judge's discretion." State v. Scott, 2008 UT App 68, ¶ 6, 180 P.3d 774 (internal quotation marks omitted). "`[T]he exercise of discretion in sentencing necessarily reflects the personal judgment of the court and the appellate court can properly find abuse only if it can be said that no reasonable [person] would take the view adopted by the trial court.'" Id. (quoting State v. Gerrard, 584 P.2d 885, 887 (Utah 1978)) (second alteration in original). Accordingly,
¶ 7 Moreau claims that the district court's decision to sentence him to prison instead of allowing him to continue in drug court was unfair and unreasonable, resulting in an abuse of discretion.
¶ 8 The issue in Galli was whether the district court had abused its discretion by failing to consider the requisite statutory factors before ordering consecutive instead of concurrent sentences. See id. at 938 (addressing the statutory factors that must be used to "determin[e] . . . whether to impose concurrent or consecutive sentences" (citing Utah Code Ann. § 76-3-401(1), (4) (1997) (current version at id. § 76-3-401(2) (2008)))). This court has repeatedly rejected the application of the Galli factors outside of cases involving consecutive sentences. See generally State v. Medina, 2010 UT App 235U, paras. 4-5, 2010 WL 3361392 (mem.) (per curiam) (rejecting the application of the Galli factors where the defendant was sentenced on a single count); State v. Myers, 2008 UT App 366U, paras. 5-6, 2008 WL 4642928 (mem.) (declining to apply Galli factors where the defendant was denied probation and sentenced to concurrent rather than consecutive prison terms).
¶ 9 Moreau has otherwise failed to show that the district court abused its discretion in sentencing him to concurrent prison terms. Moreau's sentences are within statutory limits. By statute, the indeterminate prison term is one to fifteen years for a second degree felony and zero to five years for a third degree felony. See Utah Code Ann. § 76-3-203(2)-(3) (2008). Here, the district court imposed the designated term for each of Moreau's second and third degree felony convictions. Thus, all of the sentences are clearly within the statutorily-defined limits. And because the sentences are within the statutory limits, they cannot be considered clearly excessive. See State v. Russell, 791 P.2d 188, 193 (Utah 1990) (determining that a sentence is not "clearly excessive" because it "did not exceed that prescribed by law").
¶ 10 Nor is Moreau's sentence inherently unfair or unreasonable. Moreau consistently failed to comply with his plea in abeyance agreement and the requirements of drug
¶ 11 Nevertheless, Moreau contends that the district court should have followed the general sentencing guidelines included in Adult Probation and Parole's (AP & P) presentence report, which suggested an intermediate sanction of placement in a halfway house—an approach that the State also recommended. AP & P declined to follow the general sentencing guidelines, however, and instead recommended prison time, based on consideration of aggravating factors, including Moreau's repetitive criminal conduct and inability to be supervised. The court followed the written prison recommendation from AP & P and declined to follow either the State's recommendation or Moreau's request for a lesser sanction. While sentencing courts take into account all the relevant circumstances, "a trial court is not bound by the sentencing recommendations of [AP & P] or by the requests of the parties," State v. Houk, 906 P.2d 907, 909 (Utah Ct.App.1995) (per curiam), but may, in the exercise of its discretion, rely on AP & P's recommendation of prison instead of an alternative correctional program, see State v. Martinez, 925 P.2d 176, 178 (Utah Ct.App.1996). Moreover, "the recommendations of the prosecutor or any other party are not binding upon the court." State v. Thurston, 781 P.2d 1296, 1300 (Utah Ct.App.1989).
¶ 12 Because Moreau's sentences are within statutory limits and are not clearly excessive, unreasonable, or unfair, the district court did not abuse its discretion in sentencing him to prison. Accordingly, we affirm.
¶ 13 WE CONCUR: GREGORY K. ORME and MICHELE M. CHRISTIANSEN, Judges.