29 July 2010 :

The Utah Supreme Court ruled that death-row inmate Douglas Lovell can take back his guilty plea to capital murder more than 2 decades after the crime. The decision means that Lovell could plead not guilty and go to trial in the August 11, 1985 slaying of Joyce Yost. Lovell pleaded guilty in 1993 to kidnapping Yost and strangling her in the mountains east of Ogden to prevent her from testifying that he had raped her. Under a plea deal, prosecutors agreed not to pursue the death penalty if he led police to Yost's body. Lovell, now 52, white, was unable to find the grave and was sentenced to death on Aug. 5, 1993, by then-2nd District Judge Stanton Taylor. He immediately tried to withdraw his plea, claiming his lawyer was "adamant" that Taylor would never impose the death sentence and that the judge failed to advise him of all the rights he was giving up. His effort failed and the Utah Supreme Court upheld his death sentence in 1995. But in 2005, the justices ruled that they had not disposed of the pending motion to withdraw the guilty plea and ordered a hearing on the issue in 2nd District Court. After that hearing, Judge Michael Lyon ruled in 2006 that the evidence indicated any errors were insubstantial and harmless to Lovell, who likely would have pleaded guilty anyway. The case then returned to the high court, which ruled today that Lovell should have been "clearly and unequivocally informed of his right to the presumption of innocence and the right to a public trial by an impartial jury." Lovell was charged with raping the 39-year-old Yost in spring 1985. Despite her slaying 4 months later, he was convicted of the rape based on Yost's preliminary hearing testimony. He was not charged in the slaying until his ex-wife recorded him during a 1992 prison visit confessing to killing Yost.