FARMINGTON — A prosecutor has objected to additional proposed terms for the conditional release from the Utah State Hospital of a man who fatally shot and slashed his mother 16 years ago.

Jeremy Hauck, 34, should remain in custody at the Provo institution “because his threat of dangerousness cannot be controlled through supervision” outside, Gage Arnold, a Davis County Attorney’s Office prosecutor, wrote recently in a response to new arguments by Hauck’s attorney.

Second District Judge Ronald Russell is weighing a petition by Utah State Hospital officials to authorize Hauck to live off the hospital campus under a multipoint supervision plan.

Hauck has been at the hospital since the court on March 4, 2013, found Hauck not guilty of murder by reason of insanity. The court committed Hauck to the hospital after finding the man had a mental illness and was “a substantial danger to himself and others.”

Hauck was 18 when he killed Laura Hauck, 51, on Aug. 5, 2006, in their Bountiful apartment. He shot her twice in the head and slit her throat, then stuffed her body in a freezer.

State hospital staff members testified in a September evidentiary hearing that Hauck has progressed greatly over the years and his paranoid schizophrenia is well-controlled by medication. They outlined a plan through which Hauck could live in the community and continue under close supervision, such as with frequent and random blood tests to check his medication levels or for alcohol or controlled substances.

In a court filing after the hearing, public defender Todd Utzinger expanded upon details of the proposed supervision with a 21-point regimen. Steps include random police searches of Hauck’s apartment, a requirement that he stay on the medication that controls his schizophrenia, daily check-ins with hospital staff and weekly meetings with a senior treatment coordinator at the hospital. If any violations or problems occurred, Hauck would be detained at the hospital again.

But the prosecution memo asserted that “there are no iterations (of the release plan) that will ensure (Hauck) will not become violent again.” Additionally, Hauck remaining at the hospital “is not a punishment, but an order that is constitutional and statutorily authorized,” the prosecution said.

In the 2013 commitment order, a judge sentenced Hauck to 15 years to life in the hospital, the same term he would have received if convicted of murder and sentenced to prison.

The prosecution warned against “the future illusion of supervision,” saying the release “would invite variables into the lives of unwitting Utahns due to the unpredictability of the defendant’s mental illness.”

Hauck’s and the hospital’s pledges “are not sureties and ignore the worst possible scenario if the defendant’s mental illness rears its ugly head again and he hurts or possibly kills another person like he did his mother,” the prosecution filing said.

Utzinger rebutted those arguments in a later filing, referring to a state hospital psychiatrist’s testimony that any drop in Hauck’s medication below therapeutic levels would be detected before Hauck became symptomatic.

He also noted that Hauck has participated in hundreds of off-campus monitored excursions. “That amounts to thousands of hours that Mr. Hauck has been unsupervised in the community without any incidents or troubling behavior, let alone acts of violence,” Utzinger wrote. Contrary to the prosecution’s assessment, he said, “the undisputed evidence demonstrates that (Hauck’s) mental health status has been stable and predictable ever since that illness was diagnosed and properly treated beginning nearly 12 years ago.”

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