April 7, 2021 Status Conference
Hello, friends, long time no see! Or is it hear? Or maybe write?
There hasn’t been much going on in our favorite case lately, and to tell the truth, not much happened today either.
There was a status conference this afternoon. The court scheduled the hearing a while back to discuss resetting the change of venue motion and scheduling any other pretrial motions. During the hearing today, Chad’s attorney, John Prior, and Lori’s attorney, Mark Means, asked for a continuance of the July trial date. Prior reported that there were still discovery matters he needed to talk to the prosecution about and reminded the court that there was still the issue of the change of venue motion to be determined. Prior also said he anticipated filing a motion to sever the trials.
You may remember, I discussed joinder and severance back when the state filed their motion to join the trials. To refresh your memory, it’s typically the state who asks to join cases. They do so for ease and efficiency. The DA wants one trial because it’s easier to get witnesses to appear, it’s more efficient when the DA is presenting the same evidence in a single trial, and there is less chance witnesses will change or recant their testimony. Joinder is all about efficiency.
Severance, on the other hand, is about fairness. It’s nearly always more efficient to try codefendants together, but it’s not always fair to do so. Evidence is admitted in a trial unless its probative value is substantially outweighed by the chance it will unfairly prejudice the defendant or mislead and confuse a jury.
Let’s break that down:
Chad’s Charges are:
Count 1: Destruction, concealment, or alteration of evidence (JJ)
Count 2: Conspiracy to destroy, conceal or, alter evidence (JJ)
Count 3: Destruction, concealment, or alteration of evidence (Tylee)
Count 4: Conspiracy to destroy, conceal or, alter evidence (Tylee)
Lori’s charges are:
Count 1: Conspiracy to destroy, conceal or alter evidence (JJ)
Count 2: Conspiracy to destroy, conceal or alter evidence (Tylee)
The crime of conspiracy is separate from the underlying crime - the crime the defendant conspired to do. The underlying crime doesn’t even have to be completed for the defendant to be guilty of conspiracy because it’s the act of conspiring that is the crime.
There’s an argument to be made that because Lori is only charged with the conspiracy to destroy, conceal, or alter evidence, she could be unduly prejudiced by her case being joined with Chad’s. In Lori’s case, the state doesn’t have to put on any evidence that the crime of destroying, concealing, or altering evidence actually occurred, only that Lori conspired to do it. The state only has to prove there was agreement among Chad, Lori, and Alex. The prosecutor could prove his case against Lori with just text messages or other communication between the conspirators.
Conversely, in Chad’s case, he is charged with actually doing the crime of destroying, concealing, or altering evidence. That means all the distressing information and grisly photos must come in against him. The jury could be so inflamed by that information that they could find Lori guilty of the conspiracy, even if the evidence of her complicity was flimsy. In other words, Lori could be unduly prejudiced by the admission of the evidence against Chad.
The attorneys stipulated (agreed) today to allow either side to present some of their witnesses via Zoom at the change of Venue hearing. They agreed to hear that motion on June 9, 2021. Ironically, that is the one-year anniversary of the discovery of Tylee and JJ’s bodies on Chad Daybell’s property. They did not reschedule the trial date. The court plans to hold a scheduling conference that may not be public. If you listened to today’s hearing, you heard what commonly happens in a scheduling conference. The court throws out a date, and the lawyers report whether they are available on the proposed date. There’s a lot of calendar page flipping if you are old school or scrolling if you’re more tech-savvy. There’s a lot of “sorry judge, I’m not available on that day…” from one or the other of the lawyers until they land on a date when all are free. It’s an excruciating and frustrating process, and the more lawyers there are, the harder it gets. It also can cause confidentiality issues if the lawyers have to discuss how their work with other clients might make them unavailable for this case. For those reasons, these scheduling hearings are often done privately.
I think the next thing we will see publicly is the June 9, 2021 motion hearing. At that hearing, the court will decide the change of venue motion. The judge also said he would deal with any other outstanding motions, such as the outstanding discovery motions and a potential motion to sever the cases. I still think the judge will grant the change of venue. Judge Boyce said today that the state has just started holding jury trials again and that the docket is terribly backed up. That will be the situation all over the state, so I don’t expect a trial on the current charges will be set in the new jurisdiction any sooner than the late fall. It’s possible it could be bumped all the way into next year. And yes, I can hear your tortured screams from here. Remember, these are only the low-level felony charges we're talking about. We’re all in the dark about what’s happening behind the scenes with murder and conspiracy to commit murder charges, which Rob Wood has suggested are coming.
I know I haven’t been very active in writing about this case lately, but rest assured, I am following it carefully. Unlike some tabloid TV shows that will remain nameless, I don’t like to rehash old information, so I only post when there are developments.
But lest you think I’m sitting around my Arizona pool drinking margaritas, I’ll let you in on a little secret: I’m on deadline to have my new book to my publisher by May 1. The book is called the No-Nonsense Guide to Divorce and is due out early next year from publishers Rowman and Littlefield. AND I have another fascinating project that you will all want to hear about as soon as I’m free to announce it, so stay tuned!
