This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Ogden • In a case where the defense never challenged the evidence, a jury here Wednesday convicted Douglas Anderson Lovell of aggravated murder in the 1985 death of a woman who was to testify against him.
The 12-member jury will return Friday to start hearing arguments for whether Lovell should be executed for murdering Joyce Yost and disposing of her in the mountains above Ogden. Yost's body has never been found.
Neither the attorneys involved in the case nor Yost's family offered comment to reporters Wednesday afternoon as they left the courtroom after the guilty verdict was read.
The jury deliberated for about 90 minutes before reaching their verdict. The defense gave jurors little to consider.
Deputy Weber County Attorney Gary Heward asserted Wednesday during closing arguments that they have proved "beyond all doubt" that Lovell murdered Yost to keep her from testifying that he raped her months earlier.
"What evidence has come in over the past few days that doesn't indicate that the defendant is guilty?" Heward asked the 2nd District jury Wednesday morning. "There isn't any … There is nothing before you that indicates anything else."
Lovell's defense attorney Michael Bouwhuis didn't contest Lovell's guilt during his closing argument, but asked jurors instead to be patient during the trial phase and keep an open mind as they go into the sentencing phase. With the verdict in, jurors will be tasked to decide whether he will be put to death or will be sentenced to life in prison with the possibility for parole.
"What Doug Lovell did in 1985 is absolutely horrible," Bouwhuis told jurors. "There is no excuse for it."
Prosecutors took several hours over two days to build their case, alleging Lovell kidnapped Yost in August 1985, took her to the mountains and strangled her to keep her from testifying that he had raped her months earlier.
And on Tuesday, the jury also heard Lovell confess twice to the crime: Once under oath at a 1993 court hearing and once to his ex-wife, who was wearing a police recording device.
Lovell's attorneys rarely cross-examined any of the witnesses. Their focus, they said, is on the penalty phase, where they will ask jurors to spare Lovell from execution.
Lovell, now 57, has already been sentenced to death once for murdering Yost. But after Lovell and his attorneys spent years fighting a judge's 1993 decision to impose the death penalty, the Utah Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that Lovell could withdraw his guilty plea because he should have been better informed of his rights during hearings.
On Tuesday, jurors heard Lovell describe Yost's death, as a transcript from the 1993 sentencing hearing was read aloud.
At that hearing, he described himself as fixated on getting rid of Yost before a preliminary hearing in the rape case. He said he twice hired men to kill her and failed. After Yost testified at the preliminary hearing, he said, he decided to kill her himself. And he explained how he did so on Aug. 10, 1985, 10 days before his rape trial was scheduled to start.
Lovell confessed that he entered Yost's apartment through an unlocked kitchen window and held a knife to the sleeping woman. Her hand was cut, according to the transcript, and blood soaked through her sheets and onto the mattress.
Lovell said he told her that he just needed to hide her until the rape trial was finished. But he then cleaned her home, flipped the mattress, packed her a suitcase and took her to the mountains, where he strangled her, he confessed.
Though Yost was missing when Lovell's rape case went to trial later in 1985, a transcript of her preliminary hearing testimony helped to convict him. For the rape, he is serving a 15-years-to-life sentence in the Utah State Prison.
Yost was missing for six years before Lovell's ex-wife confessed what she knew.
Lovell pleaded guilty to murder in 1993 as part of a plea deal, where prosecutors agreed not to seek his execution if Lovell could lead authorities to where Yost was buried. Despite several trips to the area around Snowbasin Ski Resort, Lovell was unable to lead police to the woman's remains prior to his sentencing date.
Prosecutors say on the April night in 1985 when Lovell raped Yost, he had followed her home from a Clearfield restaurant and asked her out. When she declined to join the stranger for a drink, they say, he kidnapped her and sexually assaulted her.
Twitter: @jm_miller