Three Roy police officers won’t face criminal charges on allegations of sexual assault, after the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office announced it won’t pursue the case further.
However, Chief Deputy District Attorney Anna Rossi Anderson wrote in a June 25 letter to the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office, the decision doesn’t mean prosecutors don’t believe the alleged victim. It means, Anderson wrote, that they don’t have enough admissible evidence to build a case likely to secure a conviction.
The allegations stem from a call sheriff’s deputies received on the night of May 14, of a situation at Snowbird Resort. Deputies responded to what they believed was a “medical emergency,” a news release said, before it was “investigated as a sexual assault.”
Initially, four Roy officers were being investigated and placed on leave. One of them was dropped from the investigation and returned to work, according to the Roy department.
Anderson’s letter is sparse on details of what was alleged to have happened at Snowbird, but does make a reference to something known as “the hot tub video.” She wrote that prosecutors did not believe they could prove the officers “knew or should have known” the alleged victim was unable to consent to what appeared to happen in the video.
Referring to a 2015 Utah Supreme Court ruling, in the case of State v. Barela, Anderson wrote that a sexual assault victim doesn’t need to say verbally they don’t consent if it is demonstrated or can be implied through their actions and conduct.
That burden of proof, according to Anderson, “presents a challenge that the admissible evidence cannot overcome.”
Anderson added: “Moreover, there is insufficient evidence that activity of a sexual nature continued in the locker rooms or sauna, or while [the victim] was unconscious.”
The prosecutor’s office has an ethical obligation, Anderson wrote, to “file cases with a reasonable likelihood of success at trial.” The District Attorney’s Office’s conclusion not to prosecute was agreed upon unanimously by several experienced prosecutors who thought “the admissible evidence in the case does not meet the legal and ethical requirements for a criminal prosecution.”
Roy police did not immediately respond Tuesday to questions about the department’s internal investigation process.