An excerpt from the detailed discussion in State v. Murphy, decided Thursday by the Utah Court of Appeals (Judge David Mortensen, joined by Judges Gregory Orme and Ryan Harris):
… Murphy was charged with aggravated sexual abuse and sodomy on a child for incidents that had occurred many years prior involving the son (Jonathan) of one of Murphy’s former close friends (Mother). The magistrate, citing lack of evidence at a preliminary hearing to establish probable cause that Murphy committed the alleged abuse, declined to bind Murphy over for trial….
The allegations of abuse in this case came to light when Jonathan, who was fifteen years old at the time, was taken to an emergency room following a mental health episode. During a subsequent interview at the Children’s Justice Center (CJC), Jonathan described being abused when he was younger while being babysat for several hours at night when Mother worked an evening shift….
“A defendant may be bound over for trial only if the prosecution produces evidence sufficient to demonstrate probable cause that the charged crimes were committed.” This requirement “is aimed at ferreting out groundless and improvident prosecutions, relieving the accused from the substantial degradation and expense incident to a modern criminal trial when the charges against him are unwarranted or the evidence insufficient.” … Accordingly, a magistrate may deny bindover “when the evidence, considered under the totality of the circumstances, is wholly lacking and incapable of reasonable inference to prove some issue which supports the prosecution’s claim.” …
Here, the magistrate struggled to find sufficient evidence that Murphy was the one who perpetrated the abuse of Jonathan. In the magistrate’s words, “[T]he element in question is identity…. The evidence here is so wholly inconsistent as to the when and the who as to render the testimony regarding identity just simply incredible and as wholly lacking and incapable of supporting a reasonable inference that the defendant is the person that [Jonathan] is talking about.”
We agree that the magistrate acted within his limited discretion when he determined that the evidence presented did not “demonstrate probable cause that the charged crimes were committed” by Murphy….
First, Jonathan was unable to identify Murphy as the perpetrator of the abuse in court even though there were only two potential candidates present in court from whom to choose. Jonathan’s inability to identify Murphy as his babysitter—along with the lack of other evidence identifying Murphy as the babysitter during the time that the abuse occurred—does not provide probable cause to conclude that Murphy committed the charged crimes.
Second, Jonathan’s age at the time of the abuse does not support …
It looks like the prosecutor in this case did so on the “all sex abuse accusations are true” principle. That particular DA can’t be a very good lawyer if he can’t make a sex charge stick.
An unfortunate reality here is they’re probably going to look into getting this magistrate fired.