Murder-case tools please prosecutors

There has not been a huge amount of publicity about it, but the Utah Legislature in the past couple of years has handed county prosecutors a number of new or revised legal tools for handling murder cases.

Among them:

• A change in state law permitting prosecutors to charge someone with a capital crime if the individual kills a child younger than age 14.

• A statutory change allowing prosecutors to decide well into the process of an "aggravated murder" case whether or not they're going to seek the death penalty.

• An increase in the sentence for non-capital murder from the former five-years-to-life to 15-years-to-life, with the state board of pardons deciding how long a person spends behind bars after the minimum portion of the sentence has been served.

"We're very excited about having these additional resources for prosecution of these cases," said Salt Lake County District Attorney Lohra Miller.

She specifically noted the possibility of the death penalty being imposed for a person convicted of murdering a child.

"They present some of our most serious offenders and the additional resources (law changes, not money) allow us to treat those cases as our most serious offenders," Miller said.

Miller said her office will "pursue them very aggressively" if such child-murder cases occur in Salt Lake County and the facts fit the law sufficiently to ask for the death penalty.

She does not expect more people will end up on death row. Instead, she anticipates this legal change will prompt more plea bargains, which she says is a good thing since it spares the victims' survivors the ordeal of a trial.

Davis County Attorney Troy Rawlings also hails these changes as beneficial for prosecutors, although he notes that plea negotiations are always case-specific and depend on the facts involved in a particular alleged crime.

Plea bargains for such a crime so serious as murder are usually complex back-and-forth negotiations where defense attorneys and prosecutors must take into account the facts, the strength of the case, any mitigating factors that might work in the defendant's favor, the possibility of mental health issues affecting the defendant and a myriad of other details, Rawlings said.