Court vacates sentence for Utah death row inmate, upholds conviction for 1985 murder

The Utah Supreme Court has vacated the sentence given to death row inmate Douglas Lovell in an opinion published on Thursday.

Douglas Lovell, 67, was convicted in 2015 of the murder of Joyce Yost in 1985 and was sentenced to death. The high court upheld his murder conviction, but vacated the death sentence and sent the case back to the district court.

Investigators say Lovell murdered Yost to prevent her from testifying against him after he had been charged with raping her. Authorities said he tried to hire two other people to kill Yost before deciding to carry out the murder himself. Her body has never been found.

Lovell argued, in asking the high court to review his conviction and sentence, that testimony he made in connection with a guilty plea in 1993 that was later vacated should not have been admitted during his trial. The 1993 guilty plea and associated death sentence were vacated in 2011, leading to a trial in 2015.

The Utah Supreme Court said the admission of the testimony did not cause enough prejudice against him "in light of the overwhelming evidence of his guilt," and affirmed his conviction.

The court did, however, say that his attorneys did not meet the standards required by the U.S. Constitution, specifically because they did not object or sufficiently respond to court testimony "regarding Lovell's excommunication from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and regarding the need for him to repent and demonstrate remorse" before he could potentially regain church membership.

"This evidence prejudiced Lovell's ability to have a jury fairly weigh the aggravating and mitigating factors, as Utah's capital sentencing statute requires, before it sentenced him to death," the court concluded. "Lovell is entitled to a sentencing hearing free from this improper and prejudicial evidence."

Lovell's case was heard in Weber County's 2nd District Court. His case will now return to that court for a new sentencing hearing.

Attorneys discussed whether his conviction and sentence should be appealed before the Utah Supreme Court on Feb. 9.

This story will be updated.