OGDEN — John Caine, the defense attorney who represented convicted rapist and death row inmate Douglas Lovell, testified Tuesday he did not promise Lovell that a judge would never impose a death sentence.
Lovell wants to withdraw his 1993 guilty plea that produced a sentence of death by lethal injection. Lovell confessed to kidnapping and raping Joyce Yost and then killing her to keep her from testifying in the rape case, which was set for trial in 1985.
Lovell claimed he never would have agreed to a plea bargain that included the death penalty as an option and never would have the sentencing portion of his capital case heard by a judge instead of a jury if he thought he'd actually end up on death row. Lovell said he signed the plea document because Caine assured him that now-retired 2nd District Judge Stanton Taylor would not impose capital punishment.
Caine, a veteran defense attorney who specializes in homicides and has handled between 30-40 capital cases, told a different version on the witness stand Tuesday.
He said he worked out a "memorandum of understanding" with prosecutors in 1993 that would spare Lovell's life and bring a sentence of life in prison without parole if Lovell would help authorities either find Yost's body or sufficient remains that could scientifically be documented as hers.
"Doug's response when we first talked about it was that he was ready to do it right then (help find the body)," Caine said. "It was winter. He said he could find the body in a blinding snowstorm."
But that didn't turn out to be the case when Lovell, Caine and law enforcement officials began combing a canyon area where Lovell said he had placed the body. "In all honesty, if he had told me in prison what he told me up the path, I would have been less inclined to enter into this negotiation," Caine was quoted as saying in a 1995 deposition.
Lovell at one time said he piled dead brush and leaves onto Yost's body, then went back a month later and dug a little with his hands to try to bury it. Since the killing occurred years earlier, the passage of time as well as the weather and other factors suggested the chances of finding Yost's remains "were nil," according to Caine's deposition.
Lovell, meanwhile, wanted to go ahead with a plea bargain, which was signed in 1993 shortly after the memorandum of understanding was prepared. He said he wanted to spare Yost's family and his own family the agony of a trial.
Caine said he urged Lovell to have the sentencing phase of the plea bargain heard by a judge instead of a jury because the facts in the case were so abhorrent they would horrify a panel chosen from the general public.
"In my professional opinion and experience with Judge Taylor, I didn't think he would impose the death penalty," Caine testified Tuesday.
Caine was questioned further about his 1995 deposition and the plea bargain that was prepared: Caine had said he thought he and prosecutors had worked out a good plea bargain, he didn't think Taylor would sentence Lovell to death even if the body were not found, and even if the judge did so, that sentence had a good chance of being overturned on appeal because a police officer testified Lovell had done everything he could to help find the body.
"I stand by that today," Caine said Tuesday.
The hearing before Second District Judge Michael Lyon is scheduled to continue today.
E-mail: lindat@desnews.com