No more 5-to-life sentences for killers in Utah?

Shoot your pregnant wife in the head, stuff her in a garbage bag and dump her in the trash and you should get more than a 5-years-to-life sentence, powerful legislators believe.

It doesn't matter much that the reality of the current sentencing law is that you'll serve more than 20 years before the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole lets you out. Utahns clearly hate the very phrase, "5-to-life."

And so legislators now intend to change the state's first-degree murder sentence — in part because they don't want to hear voters' screams if there's another Mark and Lori Hacking tragedy.

House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy, is working with the Statewide Association of Prosecutors to change the current law to say a judge can sentence an egregious murderer to 15-years-to-life.

"The impetus for this change was the Mark Hacking case," said Curtis, who added that he has not spoken to the family of Lori Hacking about it. However, Lori's father, Eraldo Soares, discussed the issue earlier this month with the Utah Sentencing Commission, calling the sentencing nomenclature "horrible" and "insulting."

But beyond the Hacking case, Curtis said, it is always best to be clear with citizens what is to be expected in the criminal justice system; and Mark Hacking's sentence at trial is not reflective of what will really happen to him.

Paul Boyden, lobbyist for the prosecutors, said in reality nothing will change from current practice of keeping murderers in prison a long, long time — except, he and others hope, public perception.

"No murderers were getting out after five years," said Boyden, a longtime prosecutor for the Salt Lake County Attorney's Office.

"And in fact, Mark Hacking got a 30-year rehearing" set by the parole board soon after being sent to the Utah State Prison, Boyden said. That means that Hacking won't even appear before the board for another hearing until 2035.

But when Hacking was formally sentenced under Utah's first-degree murder statutes to six-years-to-life (he got an extra year for using a firearm in commission of the crime), citizens who were shocked by the brutal nature of Hacking's crime started to scream. And lawmakers were listening.