Utah Prosecutor Drops Death Penalty in Prison Killing After Corrections Officials Withheld Evidence

A Utah judge has exco­ri­at­ed the Utah Department of Corrections for prac­tices he called ​“sneaky” and ​“deceit­ful” and a state pros­e­cu­tor has dropped the death penal­ty after learn­ing that state prison offi­cials had with­held near­ly 1,600 pages of prison records from a defen­dant fac­ing cap­i­tal charges in a prison killing. Despite a court order to pro­duce all prison records, the depart­ment had failed to dis­close med­ical and men­tal health records detail­ing psy­chi­atric med­ica­tion Steven Douglas Crutcher (pic­tured, right) had been receiv­ing in the months before he killed his prison cell­mate. On March 28, 2018, fol­low­ing dis­clo­sure of the records, Sanpete County Attorney Kevin Daniels (pic­tured, left) with­drew the state’s notice to seek the death penal­ty and Judge Wallace Lee sen­tenced Crutcher to life. Preparing for an April 9 cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing hear­ing, the defense learned in mid-February that the depart­ment had with­held med­ical and men­tal health records that Crutcher’s lawyer, Edward Brass, said ​“went to the heart” of the defense’s case. Brass alert­ed Daniels to the prison’s vio­la­tion of the court order and Daniels, say­ing he was ​“irate” about the pris­on’s mis­con­duct, with­drew the death penal­ty from the case. ​“I hold myself to the high­est eth­i­cal stan­dard,” he said, ​“and any with­hold­ing of infor­ma­tion is an affront to jus­tice. The whole con­cept of jus­tice is that you put all the evi­dence, all the cards on the table, and if you go where the evi­dence leads you, it’s a just result.” ​“This could have been a dis­as­ter,” Brass told reporters. ​“If it wasn’t for the integri­ty of the coun­ty attor­ney, it would have been a dis­as­ter.” Judge Lee said he was ​“beyond angry” over the department’s behav­ior. ​“This was total­ly wrong and makes me doubt the cred­i­bil­i­ty of every­thing I hear about the Department of Corrections,” he said. In a state­ment, the depart­ment blamed its fail­ure to pro­duce the records on a ​“mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion” of Judge Lee’s October order, but defense lawyers said med­ical doc­tors at the prison had been so dif­fi­cult to work with that one doc­tor even refused to tell them what med­ical school he had attend­ed. The judge ques­tioned how the depart­ment could have mis­un­der­stood an order that had direct­ed it to pro­duce Crutcher’s ​“entire file,” includ­ing all men­tal health records. ​“That is some­thing I would expect from Russia or North Korea, not a soci­ety like we have under the Constitution,” Lee said. ​“It’s got to stop. I’ve wor­ried that if it’s hap­pened in this case, it’s hap­pen­ing in oth­er cas­es out there.” A prison spokesper­son told the media that the depart­ment has retrained its clin­i­cal ser­vices records staff on respond­ing to court orders and records requests and has start­ed review­ing oth­er cas­es to deter­mine whether court orders had been respond­ed to appro­pri­ate­ly. Utah Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers exec­u­tive direc­tor Stewart Gollan said the depart­ment also has been unco­op­er­a­tive in releas­ing pris­on­ers’ med­ical records in civ­il rights cases.

(Jessica Miller, Judge ​‘beyond angry’ after Corrections work­ers with­held evi­dence, allow­ing Utah killer to avoid death penal­ty, Salt Lake Tribune, March 28, 2018; Jessica Miller, Could there be more cas­es where Utah Department of Corrections with­held med­ical records despite court orders?, Salt Lake Tribune, March 31, 2018.) See Utah and Official Misconduct.