Utah Supreme Court

SALT LAKE CITY — A former candidate for Utah lieutenant governor says those seeking public office cannot legally use a political action committee and a personal account to raise funds.

SALT LAKE CITY  — Environmental groups said Utah regulators erred in approving a strip mine near Bryce Canyon National Park in arguments held Monday before the Utah Supreme Court.

SALT LAKE CITY — State lawyers appealed a ruling that exonerated a Utah woman after she served 17 years in prison for the murder of a Logan man.

OGDEN -- Doug Lovell's attorneys want everybody out of the room when plans for the formerly convicted murderer's defense are unveiled.

The case is an unusual one. Lovell took the stand at his 1993 sentencing hearing and openly described how and why he killed Joyce Yost in 1985. He was sentenced to death, a conviction since overturned.

Lovell's public defenders now seek to close the courtroom when asking for funds to hire experts for Lovell's coming trial. It's the first motion filed by the defense since the Utah Supreme Court voted in July 2010 to allow Lovell to withdraw his guilty plea.

SALT LAKE CITY -- Utah's Supreme Court has denied a death row inmate's request for a new trial of his 1988 murder case on the grounds that he was poorly represented by his previous attorneys.

OGDEN -- Some 26 years later, Doug Lovell is coming back to Ogden to face trial for a murder for which he was once sentenced to death.

The formal paperwork is coming back to 2nd District Court from the Utah Supreme Court this week on Lovell's successful appeal last year that allowed him to withdraw his guilty plea to capital murder.

SALT LAKE CITY -- Robert Cameron Houston did not appear before the Utah Supreme Court while his appeals attorney argued Monday that his life sentence for aggravated murder is "cruel and unusual punishment."

But the family of Raechale Elton, the 22-year-old woman Houston was convicted of raping and murdering on Feb. 15, 2006, sat on the front row at the appeals hearing.

"The real victim, my daughter Raechele, got a sentence without parole," said Bruce Elton, the father of the woman who had worked at a Youth Health Associates group home in Clearfield, where Houston had been living.