The Supreme Court upheld a decision by the Utah Supreme Court to overturn a man’s death sentence.
The justices made no comment when they rejected the state’s appeal in the case of Douglas Lovell.
Lovell was charged in 1992 for the 1985 murder of Joyce Yost to prevent her from testifying against him in a trial that he raped her. Lovell’s wife, who he is now divorced from, helped Lovell prepare for the murder, authorities said. She cooperated with investigators in exchange for immunity.
The Utah Supreme Court last year upheld Lovell’s murder conviction but threw out the death sentence. It determined that during Lovell’s sentencing in 2015, his attorneys did not sufficiently respond to testimony about his excommunication from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Lovell said his court-appointed attorney never contacted witnesses and that they were also silenced by the church, meaning jurors could not fairly weigh evidence before sentencing Lovell to death.
In 2021, a state judge ruled that the church did not interfere in Lovell’s trial.
THOMAS AND ALITO DISSENT AFTER SUPREME COURT REJECTS COLLEGE FREE SPEECH CASE
State officials said Lovell originally tried to hire two people to kill Yost so that she wouldn’t testify that he raped her, but he eventually abducted and strangled her.
Lovell said he buried Yost’s remains in the Wasatch Mountains. Her body was never found.
