To avoid problems like this in the future, Flynn said Utah campaigns should be publicly financed.

Wednesday's ruling also clears Wasatch Property Management of any criminal liability, since the company does not have a contract with the county. Wasatch Property Management officials, including chief executive officer Dell Loy Hansen, did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Matt Burbank, a political science professor at the University of Utah, said the incident illustrates why the district attorney's office should be nonpartisan.

Both Miller and Gill agree. They said they believe a system needs to be set up to avoid the slightest appearance of political bias in cases requiring an investigation of elected officials or candidates. The two candidates, however, have different ideas on how to achieve that.

Miller wants the Legislature to set a statutory procedure that district attorneys must follow in cases where political bias might come into play. She said the law should clearly spell out when a district attorney should be removed from a case, as well as what a conflict of interest is for the county's top prosecutor.

Sen. Mark Madsen, R-Lehi, sponsored a bill in the 2006 legislative session that would have done just that but withdrew the bill and instead sent it to an interim study committee.

"We can make a change beforehand, before the issue comes up," Miller said. "We've got to remove politics out of the office entirely."

Gill said he wouldn't wait for the Legislature to take action. He said that within 90 days of taking office, he would set up a bipartisan advisory board made up of former judges and lawyers "that I hope I will never have to call upon." The board would review evidence and recommend whether the district attorney should file charges against an elected official.

"It would establish integrity and trust for that office," Gill said of the board. "Politics absolutely has no place at the district attorney's office — period."

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E-mail: ldethman@desnews.com