This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
In 2014, two years after a jury found Robert D. Thornton guilty of rape and sexual abuse of a 12-year-old girl, the Utah Court of Appeals reversed the convictions.
The appeals court ruled the trial judge had not conducted a sufficient analysis before letting the jurors hear evidence that Thornton, now 42, had encouraged his victim's mother to engage in prostitution and provided drugs to her.
Last week, Thornton had another reversal of fortune: The Utah Supreme Court on Feb. 21 reinstated his convictions in a 5-0 decision. The court's opinion upheld 3rd District Judge Katie Bernards-Goodman's decision to admit the alleged prior bad acts at trial.
Thornton was arrested on Dec. 31, 2010, on an outstanding warrant after police came to the mother's home to check on the 12-year-old's welfare. According to charging documents, the girl said Thornton, who rented a room in the home, had been forcing her to have sex with him.
Prosecutors said the girl had not said anything about the abuse until a few months after it started because she felt her mother was too addicted to drugs to care. When she finally revealed what was happening, her mother did not call police because she had an outstanding warrant but did tell a neighbor, who notified authorities, court documents say.
Thornton was tried three times in 3rd District Court and his defense was the girl fabricated her accusations against him.
At the first trial, the prosecution and defense agreed to exclude evidence that Thornton allegedly had encouraged the mother's involvement in prostitution so she could make money to pay for the crack cocaine he was providing her. A mistrial was declared when the mother volunteered information about Thornton's alleged role in her prostitution.
At the second trial, the parties again agreed to exclude the evidence and that proceeding ended in a hung jury.
Prosecutors then decided they needed to introduce the drug and prostitution evidence at the third trial. They requested admission on the basis the evidence would help the jury understand the circumstances that gave Thornton the opportunity to abuse the girl and discourage her from coming forward sooner.
Bernards-Goodman granted the request and Thornton was convicted in 2012 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 up to life in prison.
In an appeal of all the convictions expect the witness tampering count, Thornton's attorneys argued that Bernards-Goodman erred in admitting evidence of his alleged past misconduct.
A three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals unanimously reversed Thornton's convictions, holding that Bernards-Goodman failed to perform a "scrupulous examination" of the prior misconduct. The decision said 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 appeals court ruling 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."
That ruling was based on earlier opinions by the Utah Supreme Court that used the phrase "scrupulous examination" to describe a judge's role in assessing whether character evidence can be admitted.
The prosecution appealed, and the Supreme Court justices concluded in last week's opinion that, on reflection, the scrupulous examination standard "is more confusing than helpful," adding that "we accordingly repudiate it."
In its opinion, the Supreme Court did not look at the process Bernards-Goodman used to reach her decision to admit the evidence at trial of prior bad acts but whether she abused her "broad discretion" to do so. And, the court said, she was well within her discretion.
Thornton, who began his sentence at the Utah State Prison on Nov. 14, 2012, remained behind bars during the appeals. His first parole hearing is set for November 2027.
Twitter: @PamelaMansonSLC