This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The Utah Court of Appeals on Friday overturned the rape and sexual abuse convictions of Robert Damien Thornton, a Salt Lake City man who was convicted of assaulting a 12-year-old girl.
The court ruled the trial judge failed to conduct a sufficient analysis before admitting evidence that Thornton, now 40, encouraged the victim's mother to engage in prostitution and provided drugs to her.
The unanimous decision by a three-judge panel did not give an opinion on whether the evidence would ultimately have been admissible but said the analysis "did not rise to the level of scrupulous examination required under these circumstances."
Thornton was arrested on Dec. 31, 2010, on an outstanding warrant after police came to the mother's home — where he also lived — to check on the girl's welfare. When the child was interviewed by a detective, she said Thornton had been forcing her to have sex with him, according to charging documents.
Thornton was tried three times in 3rd District Court. A mistrial was declared at the first trial after the mother testified she had not been a prostitute before he had moved into her house and the second trial ended in a hung jury.
In the third trial, in 2012, Judge Katie Bernards-Goodman granted a request by prosecutors to allow the drug and prostitution evidence.
Thornton was convicted of three counts of rape of a child, three counts of sodomy on a child, three counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child and one count of tampering with a witness. He was sentenced to serve 25 years to life in prison.
The appeals court decision says the judge should have analyzed the two types of prior bad acts — drug dealing and prostitution — separately to determine what evidence to admit.
"In the context of a trial for aggravated sexual abuse of a child, the jury's reaction to evidence of drug dealing could be markedly different than its reaction to evidence of a defendant pressuring a drug-addicted woman into prostitution," the court said. "Evidence that Thornton introduced Mother to prostitution could also provide a jury with a greater temptation to draw an improper inference about Thornton's propensity to commit the charged sex crimes than exists with the evidence of him supplying Mother with drugs."
Twitter: @PamelaMansonSLC