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Nine months after Douglas Anderson Lovell was sentenced to die for killing a woman in 1985, he will back in an Ogden courtroom — this time fighting against his former attorney.
Lovell, 57, was found guilty in March of aggravated murder in Joyce Yost's strangulation death. Two weeks later, jurors determined Lovell should be executed for killing the woman to prevent her from testifying against him in a rape case.
The defendant is expected to be in court in mid-January as his appellate attorney asks 2nd District Judge Michael DiReda to order one of Lovell's trial attorneys, Sean Young, to hand over all of the papers he has gathered while representing Lovell the past four years.
Lovell's appellate attorney, Samuel Newton, wrote in court papers filed in October that he has tried for months to get Young to give him his case file. Newton said Lovell's lead lawyer at trial, Michael Bouwhuis, had turned over his entire case — which included a large electronic file and several boxes of materials — to the appellate attorneys within days of their request.
Newton said he talked with Young numerous times about handing over his materials, but the public defender never did so.
Newton references a number of emails in which he asks Young for the materials, and Young responds by telling him, "I don't have much else to turn over," saying he only had the same evidence Bouwhuis had already sent over, as well as his own notes taken during trial and during prison visits with Lovell.
In a May email, Young wrote to Newton, "I am more than willing to meet with you and hand over whatever you deem necessary. I just don't see the relevance of my work product notes, but if you think they are important, we can meet, discuss and [hand] over whatever you need."
Newton said that meeting never happened, and he is now asking the district court judge to order Young to give him those documents.
"Appellate counsel cannot be reasonably prepared for a capital appeal without reviewing prior counsel's file," Newton wrote. "The preparation necessary in this case is not minimal. ... Mr. Lovell cannot make claims about the adequacy of the defense representation or the effectiveness of his trial counsel without having an opportunity to review counsel's file."
Lovell's attorneys filed a notice of appeal with the Utah Supreme Court in August, though the case has had little movement since then. In October, the Supreme Court case was stayed so the issue over Young's case materials could be decided at the district court level, according to court records. Oral arguments on the case will be held in DiReda's courtroom Jan. 13.
Newton said in a Wednesday email to The Salt Lake Tribune that Young's refusal to turn over his case file has stalled the appellate process.
"The takeaway is that citizens of the state of Utah would feel that before we choose to execute a person, we should ensure that he was represented by competent counsel who zealously represented his client at a trial," Newton said. "Giving that file to his appellate attorney is the very minimum standard an attorney should follow. ... Unfortunately, the jury [in Lovell's case] did not get to hear a lot of compelling testimony about Doug because his lawyer was not adequately prepared for trial."
Young did not respond Thursday to a request for comment for this story.
In April 1985, Lovell followed Yost, 39, home from a Clearfield restaurant, kidnapping her from her apartment parking lot and sexually assaulting her in the parking lot and at his home, according to trial testimony.
After she reported the crime to authorities, Lovell began to plot the woman's death to keep her from testifying at his upcoming trial, according to testimony at Lovell's murder trial. He tried twice to hire men to kill the woman, then decided to do it himself Aug. 10, 1985.
He kidnapped the woman again from her South Ogden apartment and took her to the mountains east of Ogden, where he strangled her and left her body under handfuls of dirt and leaves.
The body was never found — despite an extensive search of the area by police in 1993, after Lovell struck a plea deal that spared him the death penalty if he could lead authorities to her body.
After the fruitless 1993 search, an Ogden judge sentenced Lovell to death by lethal injection. But, in 2011, the Utah Supreme Court ruled he could withdraw his guilty plea because he should have been better informed of his rights during court proceedings.
Yost was considered a missing person for six years until Lovell's ex-wife, Rhonda Buttars, confessed to police what she knew of Yost's death. Buttars agreed to wear a police recording device and in 1991 captured Lovell confessing to the crime. Aggravated murder charges were filed against him the following year.
Despite Lovell's efforts to prevent Yost from testifying against him in the rape case, he was convicted by a jury of aggravated kidnapping and aggravated sexual assault in December 1985, with the help of a transcript from Yost's preliminary hearing testimony. Lovell has since been serving a 15-years-to-life term at the Utah State Prison.