Way paved for capital-murder trial

A judge ruled Monday that prosecutors have enough evidence to try Floyd Eugene Maestas for capital murder in connection with the 2004 death of 75-year-old Donna Lou Bott of Salt Lake City.

Prosecutors say Maestas stomped, stabbed and strangled Bott in her home where she had been sleeping. Her battered body was discovered three days later.

But 3rd District Judge Paul Maughan said there was not enough evidence to try Maestas, 50, on a charge of forcible sexual abuse and the forcible sexual abuse component of an aggravated burglary charge regarding another elderly Salt Lake woman.

Prosecutors say Maestas attacked both women in their respective homes on Sept. 28, 2004, and Bott was killed but the other woman, who was 83 at the time, survived.

Maughan issued a 25-page written order Monday and set Oct. 16 for a scheduling conference in Maestas' case.

However, that may simply be a technicality for now since defense attorney David Mack said the defense team will appeal to the Utah Supreme Court.

Maestas, who has been in and out of prison for much of his adult life, currently is in the Salt Lake County Jail. Two other men, Rodney Roy Renzo, 20, and William Hugh Irish, 20, who prosecutors say accompanied Maestas that night on what originally was planned as home robberies, are in the Weber and Summit county jails.

Third District Judge Sheila McCleve, after a daylong preliminary hearing last year, bound Maestas over for trial on charges of aggravated murder, which carries a potential death penalty if he is convicted. She accepted additional arguments from both sides before also binding Maestas over on charges of first-degree felony aggravated burglary, which included forcible sexual-abuse elements and second-degree felony forcible sexual abuse.

Maughan agreed with McCleve that prosecutors have presented enough evidence for the capital charge that Bott "suffered both serious physical abuse and serious physical injury prior to her death" and that Maestas was in a "depraved mental state" when these injuries were inflicted.

However, Maughan disagreed with McCleve on the forcible sexual-abuse charge and the sexual elements of the aggravated burglary charge.

Prosecutors had argued that Maestas entered the home of the second woman, pulled her T-shirt over her head covering her eyes, hit her and at some point removed her T-shirt while yelling at her to tell the location of her purse.

Maughan wrote that no evidence was provided to show Maestas touched sexual areas of the woman's body, nor that taking the shirt off "exposed" her since no information was provided as to whether she was wearing underwear at the time.

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E-mail: lindat@desnews.com