Supreme Court Won’t Consider Re-Imposing Death Sentence in Utah Murder Case

The state appealed after the Utah Supreme Court held Douglas Lovell’s attorneys failed to provide effective legal representation.

The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on Feb. 10, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The U.S. Supreme Court on March 3 left in place a Utah Supreme Court ruling that overturned the death sentence of Douglas Lovell, who was convicted of murdering a woman expected to testify against him.

The Utah Supreme Court left the murder conviction itself intact. In light of the new ruling, Lovell will have to be re-sentenced.

The state of Utah filed an appeal after losing in the state court. The case has been working its way through the courts for decades.

The justices denied the state’s petition in an unsigned order. No justices dissented. The U.S. Supreme Court did not explain its decision.

Prosecutors said Lovell killed Joyce Yost in 1985 to prevent her from testifying against him on rape charges.

Lovell wasn’t charged with murder until 1992. Authorities said that Lovell had told his then-wife he was going to kill Yost and that she helped his preparations.

Prosecutors said that after Lovell’s wife divorced him, she told investigators what had happened, in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

Prosecutors said Lovell hired two separate individuals to kill Yost. After both of those attempts to end her life failed, prosecutors said Yost kidnapped her, strangled her, and concealed her remains, which have never been found.

To this day, the Utah Department of Public Safety’s cold case website lists Yost’s case as an “unsolved homicide.” The site encourages anyone who has information about the location of the victim’s body to contact police.

The Utah Supreme Court held in July 2024 that at Lovell’s 2015 sentencing, his lawyers failed to provide adequate legal representation.

Because “remorse was a central theme” of Lovell’s arguments in favor of reducing the severity of his sentence, his attorneys had religious-themed witnesses testify, including three volunteer clergy from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon Church, according to the state’s petition filed in November 2024.

The Utah Supreme Court invalidated the death sentence imposed on Lovell, ordering a fresh sentencing proceeding after finding that Lovell’s attorneys failed him. The state court determined that the lawyers “did not adequately object to the State’s cross-examination of one of these witnesses about the sincerity and authenticity of Lovell’s alleged remorse,” the petition said.

“Without any analysis of the facts and circumstances of Lovell’s crime, or the eleven proved aggravating factors, the Utah Supreme Court concluded that the jurors were encouraged by the State’s cross-examination of Lovell’s ecclesiastical leader to forfeit their assessment of Lovell’s remorse—and by extension their ultimate sentencing decision—to Church leadership.”

In other words, the state court found that the inadequate performance of Lovell’s lawyers prevented jurors from fairly assessing the evidence before handing down the death sentence.

The state asked the justices to consider if the Utah Supreme Court followed the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Strickland v. Washington (1984) that established criteria for determining if ineffective legal representation in a case constitutes a violation of a person’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel.

Lovell told the U.S. Supreme Court in a Jan. 14 brief that the Utah Supreme Court’s ruling in the case should not be disturbed.

The state court “correctly held the introduction of testimony and evidence regarding a defendant’s adherence to religious doctrines and principles and the status of the defendant’s membership in a religious organization have no relevance and should not be presented to a jury regarding the aggravating and mitigating factors a jury considers in the sentencing phase of a death penalty cases [sic].”

During the sentencing process, an aggravating factor is a fact that supports increasing the severity of a sentence. A mitigating factor is a fact that supports reducing a sentence.

The Epoch Times reached out for comment to Lovell’s attorney, Edwin Wall of Salt Lake City, and Utah Solicitor General Stanford Purser. No replies were received by publication time.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.