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A judge has ruled that the man acquitted of killing Millard County Deputy Sheriff Josie Greathouse Fox is not being charged with the same offenses in federal court for which he previously stood trial in state court.
U.S. District Judge David Nuffer in a ruling released Tuesday said Roberto Miramontes Roman says the federal government is not subjecting him to what is known as double jeopardy.
Roman's attorney, Stephen McCaughey, said he planned to appeal the ruling that came on his motion to toss out nine of the 11 of the federal charges because they were similar to those in a 2012 trial in 4th District Court in Millard County.
Nuffer ruled that the federal charges were covered by an exception to the constitutional prohibition on subjecting a person to prosecution on the same charge twice. The exception is when a person is charged with violating the laws of two distinct governments, such as state and federal.
"Because the dual sovereignty doctrine has not been overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court," Nuffer wrote, "and because the federal charges are not the same as the state charges under which Mr. Roman was previously prosecuted, there is no basis to grant Mr. Roman's motion to dismiss."
McCaughey had argued that the exception allowed to double jeopardy goes against the intent of the framers of the Constitution and is flawed because it treats state and federal governments as distinctly different and is not consistent with other areas of the law.
A 4th District Court jury acquitted Roman, 42, in August of 2012 of an aggravated murder charge for allegedly killing Fox, but found him guilty of two lesser felonies — tampering with evidence and possession of a firearm by a restricted person.
He was sentenced in October 2012 to two consecutive zero-to-five-year prison terms.
Roman allegedly initially confessed to killing Fox after she pulled over his vehicle around 1 a.m. on Jan. 5, 2010. He later recanted and, during his state court trial, claimed another man — the deputy's brother — shot Fox, 37 with an AK-47. Deputies had been tailing the two for several hours as part of a drug investigation.
Fox's brother, Ryan Greathouse, committed suicide in 2010 and never testified in the case.
A federal grand jury indicted Roman in September of 2013 on 11 charges, including that he intentionally killed a law enforcement officer and committed other crimes leading up to and related to the shooting of Fox.