Courts

SALT LAKE CITY — A judge slapped an injunction Monday on a Utah law that sought to limit the police powers of the U.S. Forest Service and other federal land-management agencies.

OGDEN — Eddie Escobedo sat on his porch, the breeze of a warm spring evening rustling the trees in his yard, while Boots, a tan cattle dog, sniffed around his feet. After a while, Escobedo, 44, who has paranoid schizophrenia and is a former drug addict with exactly 411 days of sobriety, retired to his dining room.

He spoke of how he came to be there, surrounded by yellow-painted walls and the smell of home-cooked food, rather than the bars of a prison cell.

Easing into a seat at the wooden table cluttered with books, Escobedo explained that he is one of several people in the Top of Utah whose lives have been changed by mental health courts, which offer an alternative to traditional criminal justice for mentally ill people charged with a crime.

OGDEN — So far only four attorneys have applied to fill the vacancy that will be left with Judge Michael Lyon’s coming retirement from 2nd District Court in Ogden.

And in an odd confluence of retirements, Gov. Gary Herbert is well on his way to becoming the governor who will have appointed almost a third of the state’s judiciary.

Lyon’s replacement will be the 31st state judge Herbert has appointed since he took office in August 2009, according to officials with the state Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice, which oversees the appointment process for the judges.

OGDEN — A judge has taken under advisement a defense motion to suppress former death row inmate Doug Lovell’s sworn testimony as to how and why he killed a South Ogden woman in 1985.

Lovell was sentenced to die at his 1993 sentencing hearing after he detailed strangling Joyce Yost. Now his case is set for trial in February 2014, since a Utah Supreme Court ruling allowed him to withdraw his guilty plea to the killing. In July 2010 the high court ruled that Lovell was not explicitly told out loud in open court when he pleaded guilty in 1993 that he had a right to a public trial before an impartial jury.

After brief oral arguments on the suppression bid Friday morning, Ogden 2nd District Judge Michael Lyon said he would issue a written decision at a future date.

SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Supreme Court has scheduled oral arguments on the Ogden Trece Injunction.

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah could be vulnerable to a lawsuit for falling short on its role to provide legal defense for poor people, according to two legal watchdog groups.
Utah is one of only two states that does not fund or provide oversight for its system to supply defense attorneys to those who can’t afford them.

OGDEN — A judge has rejected a defense motion calling for the death penalty to be declared unconstitutional.

Filed as part of the run-up to Matthew David Stewart’s trial in a police shooting, it is the first of several constitutional challenges expected in any death penalty case.

Stewart is charged with capital homicide in the Jan. 4, 2012, police pot raid gone bad that left officer Jared Francom dead and five other officers and Stewart injured.