OGDEN -- The defense has filed a motion to dismiss charges of automobile homicide against a teen who police say killed two people as he fled officers.
Mark Mora was 17 at the time of an April 22, 2009, car crash that killed Derek Jasper and Blake Strebel, both 19, while the two were on their way home from a church basketball game.
Mora was a burglary suspect eluding police at the time of the impact at 28th Street and Washington Boulevard.
Mora topped 80 mph, needing only 6.1 seconds to hurtle one block from Adams Avenue to Washington Boulevard and crash into Jasper and Strebel, killing them instantly, according to testimony at his Aug. 2, 2009, preliminary hearing in 2nd District Court.
Mora had accelerated suddenly after a meandering, two-minute police chase at speeds between 20 and 45 mph beginning at Harrison Boulevard. His late-1990s model Cadillac Deville was the suspect vehicle in a house burglary earlier in the day.
The case has so far survived defense motions to quash the decision to advance the case to trial and a suppression motion, moves based on claims of Miranda warnings and technical violations in obtaining a warrant to test Mora's blood-alcohol content, which tested at 0.14, well above the legal limit of 0.08.
In the new motion filed earlier this month, Mora's attorney, Mike Boyle, argues that Utah's system of directly filing charges in adult court against a juvenile for serious offenses is unconstitutional.
That question is currently pending before the Utah Supreme Court, stemming from a 2009 Salt Lake City case involving a 16-year-old charged with murder.
Boyle employs those arguments currently pending before the high court, that allowing a prosecutor to decide "without any oversight or legislative guidelines" to file in adult or district court violates Sixth Amendment rights of due process.
Such leeway "constitutes an unbridled and unconstitutional discretion to determine the offense and the forum," the motion reads.
Oral arguments on the motion are set for Sept. 7 before 2nd District Judge Scott Hadley.
The motion also argues that the decision to file against Mora as an adult is likely based on racism, citing a study titled "Minority Overrepresentation in the Juvenile Justice System" that found "evidence of discrimination" in juvenile courts.
The study found African American, Hispanic and American Indian youths were three to five times more likely to be sentenced to secure juvenile facilities than Caucasians, states the motion, while the minorities make up less than 10 percent of all juveniles in the state.
Little detail was provided on the study.
In response to the racism claim, Deputy Weber County Attorney Ben Willoughby, in his answer to the motion, wrote simply, "The defendant does not specify a constitutional provision involved or an analysis of why that provision would be violated, which leaves that legwork to the court."
On the charge of unbridled discretion by a prosecutor in filing charges in juvenile or district court, the response claims 2008 changes to the law "not only bridles the prosecutor's discretion, but takes it away."
The terms of the "direct file" statute now clearly define when a juvenile will be tried as adult, Willoughby wrote. "There is no longer a possibility of disparate treatment."
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