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Attorneys for an Orem man whose murder conviction was recently overturned due to incorrect home measurements are asking a Utah judge to take a rare action: Dismiss the case against their client for what they deem "outrageous government misconduct."

Conrad Mark Truman, 34, is charged with murder, a first-degree felony, and obstructing justice, a second-degree felony, in 25-year-old Heidy Truman's 2012 death.

A jury in 2014 convicted the husband of the crimes, but 4th District Judge Samuel McVey ruled in August that Conrad Truman would receive a new trial because jurors relied on incorrect measurements of the couple's home when they found him guilty of a holding a gun to his wife's head and pulling the trigger inside their Orem residence Sept. 30, 2012. A new trial has been set for Feb. 1.

But Truman's attorneys are asking the judge to toss the case altogether and bar the state from prosecuting it again, arguing that police and prosecutors covered up mistakes, allowed false testimony at trial, and hid or destroyed evidence that could have helped their client.

"Usually, prosecutorial misconduct results in a new trial," defense attorney Ann Marie Taliaferro wrote in an email to The Salt Lake Tribune. "To bar prosecution of a criminal case — especially a homicide case — almost never happens. … But this is not the usual case."

Taliaferro and defense attorney Mark Moffat assert in court papers that prosecutors knew of many problems with the case — most stemming from the measurement error, in which the officer who measured the home recorded inches as feet, resulting in diagrams that made the Truman home appear larger than it was — and presented it to a jury anyway.

Prosecutors knew there was no financial motive for murder, but presented it anyway, the defense alleges. They knew their diagrams were wrong, the defense asserts, and they knew Conrad Truman's statements to police were not inconsistent.

They knew there were problems with the police's collection of gunshot residue — so they presented incorrect testimony that GSR testing was not reliable, the defense argued.

These weren't simple mistakes, a disagreement in interpretation or overreaching by prosecutors, the defense attorneys argued: It was a knowing presentation of false evidence to a jury.

"This 'outrageous government misconduct' has so pervaded and tainted every phase of this prosecution, every piece of material evidence, every witness, and every theory of prosecution, that the misconduct has irreparably corrupted these proceedings to the prejudice of Truman," the attorneys wrote. "Prejudice that cannot be remedied by any less drastic means short of a dismissal."

Deputy Utah County Attorney Tim Taylor "absolutely disagrees" with the defense team's allegations. "Quite honestly, I'm pretty offended," Taylor said Monday. "... We acknowledge the measurements were a mistake. But to allege that it was done purposely — I think that's just offensive."

Conrad Truman has maintained his innocence, saying at his sentencing hearing: "I can't say sorry for something I did not do."

His attorney argued at trial that Heidy Truman shot herself, perhaps accidentally. Where Heidy Truman was shot inside their home, and how far she could have traveled after she was wounded before collapsing near a stairwell, were contentious points at trial.

The incorrect measurements, Moffat has argued, could have led jurors to discredit Conrad Truman's testimony that his wife was shot in the hallway, because they would have shown that his wife had to travel down a hallway that was 2 feet longer than it actually was before falling. During the trial, a medical examiner testified that the woman could have traveled only about a foot or a foot-and-a-half after suffering a gunshot wound to the head.

In his ruling granting a new trial, McVey wrote that the police officer who measured the home recorded inches as feet, so a hallway measurement of 139 inches became 13.9 feet — instead of just over 11.5 feet.

Conrad Truman's attorneys assert that prosecutors and police visited the home and should have known the measurements were wrong, and that Heidy Truman's body, as displayed in the diagrams could not have been a great distance from where the hallway was.

While the defense maintains that these faulty measurements became the foundation for the entire prosecution, Taylor said the 2-foot difference was not make-or-break for their case. "It's not super-critical," he said. "... We're planning to present basically the same case, and most of the same witnesses [at the second trial]."

In court papers, Taylor asked the judge to deny the motion, saying the defense team is regurgitating issues upon which the judge has already ruled.

Taylor asserts that prosecutors did not know about the measurement error until well after trial, and did not knowingly present false evidence. He pointed to the judge's findings in ordering a new trial, in which the court wrote that "neither counsel for the defense [nor] the prosecution could have reasonably known about the [measurement] error."

"The defendant wants this court to now find that the prosecution readily knew that the measurements were false and perpetrated a fraud upon the court," Taylor wrote. "Since this court has already made findings that the prosecution team could not have reasonably known about the measurement errors, the state respectfully asks this court to deny the defendant's motion."

The motion to dismiss is just one of a flurry of motions filed by Truman's lawyers. They also asked the judge to find that the police erred by telling Truman to wash his hands before they could swab his hands for gunshot residue. This "completely destroyed" Truman's ability to show that he did not fire the weapon that killed his wife, the attorneys argued.

No court dates to argue the motions had been set as of Monday.