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Douglas Anderson Lovell, the Ogden man recently sentenced to death for the second time in a 1985 murder case, is now asking for a new trial — claiming lawyers with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints interfered with his March trial.

Last month, one of Lovell's attorneys, Sean Young, filed court papers claiming church lawyers tried to keep out testimony from five ecclesiastical leaders who had interacted with the death row inmate during the last three decades while he was at the Utah State Prison.

Young wrote that the church attorneys and Lovell's attorneys came to a compromise: Three of the leaders would testify, and the church attorneys would not try to quash any of the subpoenas.

"The morning that these leaders were set to testify at Mr. Lovell's sentencing hearing, the same [LDS church] attorneys from Kirton & McConkie appeared at the courthouse and threatened to interfere with the testimony of these ecclesiastical leaders, if I did not limit their testimony on the stand," Young wrote.

Young claimed the church's attorneys sought to limit the testimony to only facts about their involvement with Lovell at the prison, and did not want to leaders to solicit any opinions or give any personal insight. This was harmful to Lovell's case, Young claims.

Church spokesman Eric Hawkins said the leaders don't usually participate in non-church matters, but the officials were subpoenaed and gave personal opinions.

The three church leaders who testified in March all recalled that Lovell was interested in the church, and seemed remorseful for murdering Joyce Yost.

"He never made light," former bishop Gary Webster testified. "He never made fun. He was always concerned about the crime, the impact."

After two weeks of testimony in the sentencing phase for Lovell, 12 jurors deliberated for nearly 11 hours over two days before deciding the 57-year-old man should be executed for killing 39-year-old Yost in 1985 to keep her from testifying against him in a rape case.

Lovell had already been sentenced to death once for Yost's murder, but the case came back to the district court on appeal in 2011.

Along with issues with the former bishops' testimonies, Lovell's attorneys are also seeking a new trial on the basis that 2nd District Judge Michael DiReda would not allow the defendant to plead guilty to aggravated murder on the eve of trial.

"In this particular case — where evidence of guilt was overwhelming — it was important for defendant to be able to officially acknowledge his guilt while being able to make a valid argument in sentencing for life in prison," his attorneys wrote in an April filing.

But prosecutors countered in court papers that Lovell wanted to "have his cake and eat it too," by only entering a "conditional" guilty plea that would still allow him to challenge several pretrial rulings. They argue that Lovell had no right to enter a conditional guilty plea.

DiReda had not made a ruling on the motion for new trial as of Monday, and no court dates have been set.

— The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Twitter: @jm_miller