Four Utah Prosecutors Urge Legislature to Repeal and Replace Death Penalty

Four Utah dis­trict attor­neys, rep­re­sent­ing coun­ties that com­prise 57.5% of the state’s pop­u­la­tion, have urged the state leg­is­la­ture and Utah Governor Spencer Cox to enact leg­is­la­tion to repeal and replace Utah’s death penalty.

In an open let­ter to Cox and the leg­is­la­ture released September 14, 2021, Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill, Grand County Attorney Christina Sloan, Summit County Attorney Margaret Olson, and Utah County Attorney David Leavitt — two Republicans and two Democrats — called cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment ​“a grave defect” in the oper­a­tion of the law ​“that cre­ates a lia­bil­i­ty for vic­tims of vio­lent crime, defen­dants’ due process rights, and for the public good.” 

The four pros­e­cu­tors wrote, ​“the death penal­ty in Utah today is a per­ma­nent and irre­versible sen­tence with­in an imper­fect sys­tem. It fails to deter crime. It retrau­ma­tizes vic­tims. It dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly applies to minori­ties. It is expen­sive. And it makes plea nego­ti­a­tions coer­cive.” Endorsing leg­is­la­tion pro­posed September 8 by State Representative Lowry Snow and State Senator Daniel McCay, the pros­e­cu­tors said “[t]he Legislature would bet­ter serve Utah by replac­ing the death sen­tence with [a] 45 years to life term,” per­mit­ting aggra­vat­ed mur­der in the state to be pun­ish­able by a sen­tence of life with­out parole, 45 years to life, or 25 years to life. 

The pros­e­cu­tors unveiled their let­ter in a news con­fer­ence host­ed by Gill and attend­ed by Leavitt and Olson. Gill, whose office serves the near­ly 1.2 mil­lion peo­ple in Utah’s largest County, stressed the untrust­wor­thi­ness of the jus­tice sys­tem to per­fect­ly pro­tect the inno­cent. Noting that one death-row pris­on­er has been exon­er­at­ed for every nine peo­ple exe­cut­ed since cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment resumed in the U.S. in the 1970s, Gill said, ​“If a pilot was good only 90% of the time at land­ing the plane, we would say that per­son should­n’t be fly­ing.” Leavitt, whose office serves the 665,000-person Utah County, the sec­ond largest in the state, was more blunt. ​“The death penal­ty,” he said, ​“is sim­ply a big lie that we tell our­selves to help us believe that we’re mak­ing a difference.” 

Snow and McCay empha­sized the death penalty’s adverse impact on fam­i­ly mem­bers of mur­der vic­tims in their ear­li­er news con­fer­ence announc­ing the repeal effort. Olson returned to that theme at the pros­e­cu­tors’ news con­fer­ence. ​“Instead of the death penal­ty pro­vid­ing clo­sure to vic­tims,” she said, ​“the con­sti­tu­tion­al appeals that fol­low mean a death sen­tence will take decades to impose if it ever hap­pens. … Since the year 2000, more men have died of old age on death row [in Utah] than by execution.”

The open let­ter also direct­ly addressed the issue of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in Utah’s death penal­ty. The pop­u­la­tion of Utah is more than 86% white but its death row is 42.9% pris­on­ers of col­or. The let­ter states that the first two peo­ple exe­cut­ed in the Utah ter­ri­to­ry were Native American and two of the sev­en peo­ple exe­cut­ed in Utah since 1977 were Black. ​“Utah is more like­ly to exe­cute racial minori­ties than white peo­ple for the same offense,” it says. The state’s sev­en-per­son death row cur­rent­ly includes one Black, one Latinx, and one Native American prisoner. 

The pros­e­cu­tors also addressed what they described as the ​“inher­ent­ly coer­cive impact” of the death penal­ty on plea nego­ti­a­tions. ​“A defendant’s need to bar­gain for one’s very life in today’s legal cul­ture … gives already pow­er­ful pros­e­cu­tors too much pow­er to avoid tri­al by threat­en­ing death,” the let­ter states. Leavitt told Salt Lake City news out­let KSL, ​“Do we real­ly want to live in a soci­ety where the gov­ern­ment will threat­en to kill us unless we agree to spend the rest of our life in prison, and at the same time we allow the gov­ern­ment not to prove its case against us?”

The pros­e­cu­tors con­clude their let­ter with a call to add a sen­tenc­ing option of 45 years to life to Utah’s aggra­vat­ed mur­der statute. ​“As pros­e­cu­tors, we are not seek­ing mer­cy for the mur­der­er but jus­tice for the peo­ple,” they explain. ​“A 45 to life sen­tence will mean that if an offend­er ever gets out, it will not be until the twi­light of their lives. That will pro­tect the pub­lic and, to the extent pos­si­ble, pro­vide a small mea­sure of jus­tice for what that per­son has tak­en away.” Their pro­pos­al would still per­mit life with­out parole or 25 years to life as alter­na­tive sentencing options. 

Gill said the pros­e­cu­tors had worked with leg­is­la­tors to draft repeal leg­is­la­tion, and that they believed the addi­tion of a 45 years to life sen­tence was essen­tial. ​“I’ve talked to far too many vic­tims who just said, ​‘25 to life? That’s all we can look for­ward to?’ So, it was a very delib­er­ate num­ber that I chose, which was 45 to life. That says, this takes this mat­ter seri­ous­ly. That rec­og­nizes the seri­ous­ness of the harm and the kind of account­abil­i­ty that vic­tims are look­ing for. And it will age some­body out so that they will nev­er be able to com­mit that type of offense again,” he said.

The let­ter was released less than a week after two Republican leg­is­la­tors announced a renewed effort to repeal the state’s death penal­ty and Leavitt announced he will no longer seek death sen­tences. The pros­e­cu­tors’ let­ter echoed the sen­ti­ments expressed by Snow and McCray, who said the death penal­ty ​“sets a false expec­ta­tion for soci­ety, sets a false expec­ta­tion for the vic­tims and their fam­i­lies, and increas­es the cost to the state of Utah and for states that still have capital punishment.”