SANDPOINT ­— The Idaho Court of Appeals is upholding the sentence imposed against a Bonner County man for possessing methamphetamine and committing thefts in Bonner and Kootenai counties.

Nicholas William Shuff was given a two- to 10-year term after pleading guilty to charges of grand theft, burglary and felony drug possession.

Shuff, 31, was implicated in the June 2018 theft of a construction trailer filled with scores of tools from a Ponderay job site. Video surveillance footage showed Shuff pulling the purloined trailer with his Dodge pickup truck after the theft, according to court documents. Tracks left in the dirt in the 500 block of Starr Lane also matched the treads of the tires on Shuff’s rig.

Shuff admitted to making off with the trailer, according to a Ponderay Police affidavit.

Shuff was charged with burglary in Kootenai County after he attempted to push a cart laden with $718 of merchandise out of a Walmart in Hayden without paying the same month he stole the trailer in Ponderay, court records show.

“Drugs are my downfall,” Shuff said in a letter to the court in which he asked to be spared a prison term and allowed to serve probation in Arizona in order escape northern Idaho’s drug underworld.

Judge Lansing Haynes imposed concurrent 10-year terms, the first two years of which were fixed.

Shuff appealed the sentence, arguing that it was excessive. Shuff maintained that he should have been placed in the Idaho Department of Correction’s retained jurisdiction program, which could have qualified him for release onto probation after serving up to a year in prison.

The appeals court disagreed, however.

“The primary purpose of the retained jurisdiction program is to enable the trial court to obtain additional information regarding the defendant’s rehabilitative potential and suitability for probation, and probation is the ultimate objective of a defendant who is on retained jurisdiction,” the appeals court said in a unanimous opinion released on Wednesday.

Justices ruled that the lower court had sufficient information upon which to conclude that the defendant is not a suitable candidate for probation.

Shuff is serving his sentence at the Idaho State Correctional Center in Kuna, according to IDOC’s website. His parole eligibility date is listed as Oct. 7, 2022.