In the weeks leading up to the Kouri Richins trial in February, someone, apparently in law enforcement, sent the Summit County Attorney’s Office an “anonymous letter.” That letter accurately informed the prosecution that one of their proposed witnesses, a law enforcement officer, had a disciplinary history that might affect his credibility. Rather than call that officer as a witness, the prosecution elected not to do so.
I was a prosecutor for eight years at the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office and have been in private practice for another 36 years.
That information was vital, and the failure to disclose it might very well have invited a mistrial in a high-profile criminal trial. Our rules of professional conduct as attorneys, plus state law, require such a disclosure.
I also represent three of the officers involved.
Rather than acknowledge that the information disclosed in the anonymous letter was accurate, fair and likely saved the need to redo the entire trial, the county attorney now seeks to shoot the messenger(s).
The County Attorney’s Office has been investigating this disclosure for some time. Rather than keeping that investigation private and confidential, one of the few people who has the anonymous letter decided to make it public, and has been leaking other private information, including the name and disciplinary history of the officer involved, to the media and the public.
Rather than have an independent prosecutor or investigator investigate this, Summit County is handling it all internally. The Summit County attorney purports to be the witness (having received the anonymous letter), the victim (of the alleged obstruction of justice charge), the investigator (having issued numerous search warrants and subpoenas), and, of course, the prosecutor.
I dare anyone run the ethics of that by any first-year law student.
We have literally begged that office to have the Attorney General’s Office, the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office, the Wasatch County Attorney’s Office, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, or, for that matter, any other prosecutor in the state of Utah take an independent, objective look into this matter.
Despite the obvious ethical problems, the Summit County attorney has consistently refused.
You have to ask yourself, “Why?”
Gregory G. Skordas
Skordas & Caston, Salt Lake City