This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Stephanie Sloop — charged with murder in the 2010 death of her son — was in court Thursday for a brief status hearing.
Prosecutors told 2nd District Judge Thomas Kay they have made "significant progress," but need at least one more month before deciding where to go with the case.
Sloop will be back in court July 3.
Sloop, 31, is charged with first-degree felony aggravated murder, second-degree felony counts of obstructing justice and inflicting serious injury on a child, and third-degree felony abuse or desecration of a dead human body after Ethan Stacy died in 2010.
The woman's husband, Nathan Sloop, 35, faced the same charges in the death of his stepson. He pleaded guilty but mentally ill in February to aggravated murder — a capital offense — while the remaining charges related to the boy's death were dismissed. He also pleaded guilty but mentally ill to second-degree felony aggravated assault by a prisoner for attacking a Davis County jail officer.
A judge immediately sentenced Nathan Sloop to 25 years to life in prison for the murder, and 1 to 15 years for the aggravated assault. The sentences were ordered to run concurrently.
"That boy died on my watch and I'm horribly sorry," Nathan Sloop told 2nd District Judge Glen Dawson before he was sentenced.
At Stephanie Sloop's last court hearing in February, her attorney, Mary Corporon told the judge that she believes evidence that could help prove the woman's innocence in the case has not been released to her because Nathan Sloop's attorneys have argued that they are protected documents. Releasing that evidence to Corporon would violate Nathan Sloop's constitutional rights, his defense attorneys have argued.
Davis County Attorney Troy Rawlings said he would like to give the information to Corporon, but competing constitutional claims by Nathan Sloop have prevented it.
"The competition here is between Mr. and Mrs. Sloop," Rawlings told Dawson during the February hearing.
Neither Rawlings nor Corporon detailed what the potentially exculpatory evidence was.
Charging documents state the Layton couple engaged in multiple acts of "severe abuse" between April 29 and May 8 in 2010 that led to Ethan's death, including "beatings, burning, drugging, isolating, malnourishing, leaving the child alone and unattended while suffering, and refusing to seek vital life-sustaining medical attention."
The couple — who said they left the injured boy in a locked bedroom while they got married on May 6 — reported Ethan missing to police on Mother's Day, May 10, after discovering the boy was dead. But after a 12-hour search, police say the couple confessed to burying the boy near Powder Mountain Ski Resort in Weber County.
Nathan Sloop, who led officers to the body on May 11, told police he used a hammer to disfigure the boy's face and teeth in an effort to hinder identification.
Twitter: @jm_miller