Twenty years ago, John Madison Raines, a 30-year-old fugitive from Idaho, walked into Cyprus Pharmacy in Magna and shot the owner, Doug Orchard, to death during the course of robbery.
Later that year, then-Deputy County Attorney David Yocom stood before a jury and argued Raines should die for his crime. It was the first time Yocom had made that argument before a jury, but it was far from his last.Later this month, Yocom, who is now the coordinator of capital homicide prosecutions and appeals for the Utah Attorney General's Office, will join Sanpete County Attorney Ross Blackham and Assistant Attorney General Kirk Torgensen in prosecuting Eric Daniels, charged with the gruesome prison block murder of Lonnie Blackmon in 1994.
The state's argument: Daniels deserves to die for his crime.
Yocom, 58, has prosecuted capital homicide cases for 25 years now. "Please don't call me Dr. Death," Yocom said. "It is part of our role as prosecutors. As long as the Legislature provided the death penalty as a means of punishment, we as prosecutors should enforce it and make sure juries have all the tools they need to make that decision."
Given his unique trial experience - he also has defended killers in capital homicide cases during a tenure in private practice - Yocom is arguably Utah's most experienced trial attorney when it comes to the death penalty. He was also one of the most visible, prosecuting such notorious felons as Ervil LeBaron and Ted Bundy.
That experience notwithstanding, Yocom has found it nigh impossible to persuade juries to impose the death penalty. Only once was Yocom responsible for a death sentence, and that case was later overturned on appeal.
"You learn early on in this business that, for whatever reason, juries are reluctant to impose the death penalty," Yocom said. "We only have 10 (inmates) on death row in this state, only two of them from Salt Lake County."
Even when you add the five inmates who have been executed since Gary Gilmore in 1977, Utah's death row has had remarkably few residents since 1973 when the state re-implemented the death penalty. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down all death penalty statutes in 1972, forcing states to rewrite their laws.
That was at the same time when Yocom was cutting his teeth as a prosecutor, first with the district attorney's office in 1969 and later with the county attorney's office after the Legislature consolidated the offices in 1972.
It was also a time when prosecutors throughout the state struggled with how to implement new death penalty laws. "I think we were all hesitant to move forward with death penalty cases because of uncertainties as to what the Supreme Court was going to do," he said. "Those first couple of cases were difficult."
In those days, most capital homicide cases never even reached a penalty-phase hearing. The majority of defendants were found guilty of lesser homicide charges or, as is the still the case today, pleaded guilty with the promise the state would not seek the death penalty. It was four years after Utah's new death penalty law that Yocom actually argued a penalty phase hearing before a jury.
Yocom tried more than a dozen capital homicide cases during the 1970s, culminating in the 1979 trials of polygamist cult leader Ervil LeBaron and one of his wives, Rena Chenowyth who were both charged in the murder of a rival polygamist. It still irritates Yocom that Chenowyth was acquitted of the murder, yet later admitted the shooting in her book on the cult.
Yocom left the county attorney's office in 1979, going into private practice with prominent defense attorneys Marty Verhoef and James Barber. It was also the year Yocom was appointed to defend avowed racist Joseph Paul Franklin, who had been charged in the murders of two black joggers in Liberty Park.
Franklin, who had already been convicted of civil rights violations in federal court, was subsequently convicted by a state court; however, the state jury refused to impose the death penalty.
"The sole purpose of pursuing it on the state level was to get the death penalty," Yocom said. "Arguing against the death penalty, on my part, was an entirely new experience. There was so much more pressure, that if I did not do my job then this person was going to die because of it."
In 1986, Yocom returned to the other side of the aisle, winning election as county attorney and replacing the scandal-plagued Ted Cannon. "I liked prosecution, it was my first love," he said. "I saw the office that I had helped build and had worked in going down the tubes, and I did not see anybody on the horizon that would step in and straighten out the mess."
Yocom spent eight years as Salt Lake County's chief prosecutor, and he was the only county attorney in recent history to personally prosecute death penalty cases.
After losing a re-election bid in 1994, Yocom was faced with the prospect of returning to private practice. It was also the same time that the Utah Attorney General's Office advertised for a prosecutor experienced in death penalty law.
"It certainly fit in with my background and expertise," he said. "But no, the job was not created for me after I lost the election."
Today, Yocom, a Salt Lake native and 1965 graduate of the University of Utah law school, works with five other attorneys who assist county prosecutors in death penalty cases and also handle the litany of appeals of death sentences.
"My job is to keep the cases moving through the legal system, making sure the penalty is eventually carried out," he said "I suppose if there is a case where errors had been committed, it is my job to do justice, to make sure someone unjustly committed is not executed."
Most of the team's work involves complicated legal minutiae: discovery motions, evidentiary hearings, various motions to dismiss evidence or invalidate trial court decisions. It is a long and tedious process involving state and federal courts.
Ironically, one of the 10 killers on death row whom the attorney general's team is trying to get executed is Elroy Tillman, one of the men Yocom represented as a defense attorney in a 1982 killing. Because of conflict of interest rules, Yocom is screened from any involvement in that case. "I played a very minor role in that case, anyway," he said.
At each stage of the appeals process, the Utah Attorney General's Office represents the state, which is trying to impose the death sentence. "The very fact that the area of death penalty litigation is changing constantly requires a lot of re-evaluation," Yocom said. And each change can mean delays.
Recent reforms at the state and federal levels are directed at speeding up the appeals process. For example, federal legislation limits the appeals of death row inmates if they are provided with qualified death sentence-experienced attorneys at the time of trial. Utah passed a law to pay for such defense counsel with the belief that competent defense counsel on the front end would shorten the time from conviction to execution.
Utah law also specifies the exact qualifications of defense attorneys in such cases.
"As long as the state has a death penalty, it is my job to see that the state's interests are represented in carrying it out," he said.
Would the state's interest be served by another run at public office? "I'm only 58 and I would like to think I have a few good years left in me," he said. "I have never ruled it out."