Supreme Court upholds decision to overturn Utah man’s death sentence – Washington Examiner

Elaine MallonMarch 3, 2025

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Supreme Court sides with Utah high court in overturning man’s death sentence

The Supreme Court upheld a decision by the Utah Supreme Court to overturn a man’s death sentence.

The justices made no comment when they rejected the state’s appeal in the case of Douglas Lovell.

Douglas Lovell is escorted into the courtroom for an evidentiary hearing, Monday, Aug. 5, 2019, in Ogden, Utah. Lovell, a Utah death-row inmate, is heading back to court to determine if he had ineffective legal counsel and if the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints meddled in his 2015 trial. The Standard-Examiner reports 61-year-old Lovell will be back in an Ogden courtroom over questions about the trial that resulted in his second death sentence. (Trent Nelson /The Salt Lake Tribune, via AP, Pool)

Lovell was charged in 1992 for the 1985 murder of Joyce Yost to prevent her from testifying against him in a trial that he raped her. Lovell’s wife, who he is now divorced from, helped Lovell prepare for the murder, authorities said. She cooperated with investigators in exchange for immunity.

The Utah Supreme Court last year upheld Lovell’s murder conviction but threw out the death sentence. It determined that during Lovell’s sentencing in 2015, his attorneys did not sufficiently respond to testimony about his excommunication from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Lovell said his court-appointed attorney never contacted witnesses and that they were also silenced by the church, meaning jurors could not fairly weigh evidence before sentencing Lovell to death.

In 2021, a state judge ruled that the church did not interfere in Lovell’s trial.

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State officials said Lovell originally tried to hire two people to kill Yost so that she wouldn’t testify that he raped her, but he eventually abducted and strangled her.

Lovell said he buried Yost’s remains in the Wasatch Mountains. Her body was never found.

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