Victim's daughter devastated over new trial for Utah death-row inmate

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Twenty-five years after Joyce Yost disappeared, the man who was secretly recorded admitting to her murder has the chance to leave Utah's death row.

On Tuesday, the Utah Supreme Court ruled that Douglas Anderson Lovell can take back his guilty plea to capital murder and go to trial on charges that he kidnapped and strangled the South Ogden woman in 1985.

The justices said the trial judge who sentenced Lovell to die failed to clearly list all of the rights he was giving up when he pleaded guilty to the crime.

The news was devastating for Yost's daughter, Kim Salazar.

"I just don't understand how this happens," a shaken Salazar said. "He admitted his guilt."

Assistant Utah Attorney General Laura Dupaix, who had argued to the high court last year that the guilty plea should remain in place, called the ruling "a particularly bitter pill to swallow for the victims, particularly where we know that Douglas Lovell is guilty."

Making the ruling even harder for the victims is that it is based on a legal technicality involving questions that the trial judge didn't ask when Lovell pleaded guilty, Dupaix said.

But defense attorney David Finlayson, who argued the appeal, said the issue was important.

"I think it's an important part of the plea to make sure somebody understands all those rights," he said.

The case now goes back to a 2nd District Court judge, who will appoint two defense attorneys for Lovell who are qualified to handle capital punishment cases. Weber County Attorney Dee Smith said prosecutors will aggressively pursue another conviction.

"We certainly intend to retry the case, and we will seek the death penalty," he said.

Lovell pleaded guilty in 1993 to killing the 39-year-old Yost in the mountains east of Ogden to prevent her from testifying that he had raped her four months earlier. Under a plea deal, prosecutors agreed not to pursue the death penalty if he led police to Yost's body.

Lovell, now 52, was unable to find the grave and was sentenced to death on Aug. 5, 1993, by then-2nd District Judge Stanton Taylor. The condemned man tried to withdraw his plea in a handwritten letter, claiming his lawyer was "adamant" that Taylor would never impose the death sentence and that the judge failed to advise him of all of the rights he was giving up by pleading guilty.

His effort failed, and the Utah Supreme Court upheld his death sentence.

In subsequent appeals, defense attorney Lynn Donaldson continued to press the rights issue and in 2005, the justices ordered a hearing on the matter in 2nd District Court, saying they should have made it clearer in an earlier ruling that they wanted the trial judge to consider Lovell's request to withdraw the guilty plea.

After that hearing, Judge Michael Lyon concluded in 2006 that Taylor had not expressly covered all of Lovell's rights when he accepted his guilty plea. But, he said, Lovell understood his rights from his previous experience and convictions in the criminal justice system and the omission had not harmed him.

The case then returned to the high court, which ruled Tuesday that Lovell should have been "clearly and unequivocally informed of his right to the presumption of innocence and the right to a public trial by an impartial jury."

Lovell was accused of kidnapping Yost in April 1985 and taking her to his Clearfield home, where he raped her. Despite her disappearance four months later, Lovell was convicted of kidnapping and sexual assault based on Yost's testimony at a June 1985 preliminary hearing.

He was sentenced to two terms of 15 years to life in prison and is still serving those sentences. The Supreme Court decision does not affect those convictions, and Lovell will remain incarcerated.

Although Lovell was the primary suspect in Yost's disappearance, the investigation stalled for several years until his ex-wife agreed to a police request to wear a recording device while visiting him in prison in 1991 and 1992. According to court records, Lovell made incriminating statements, including, "I committed a first-degree felony to cover another felony. It's the death penalty ... I planned to kill Joyce."

A 1999 Utah Supreme Court ruling said Lovell

twice hired friends from an earlier prison stint to kill Yost. The first ex-convict, who was offered $600, waited at Yost's apartment to kill her but she did not return that night. The second would-be killer, who was offered $600 to $800, did not carry out the slaying.

The ruling said that on Aug. 10, 1985, Lovell broke into Yost's apartment while she was sleeping, put his hand over her mouth and held a knife over her. Yost pleaded for her life and promised to drop the sexual assault charges.

Lovell gave Yost some Valium, then packed a suitcase to make police believe she had left on her own accord, the ruling said. He then drove Yost to a canyon outside of Ogden and strangled her, returning later to bury the body.

pmanson@sltrib.com

Mariangela Mazzei contributed to this report.