Stuart Adams says he won’t resign over claims he influenced new law to help family member

Utah Senate President Stuart Adams has rejected calls for his resignation, defending his decision not to disclose a personal connection to a law passed in 2024 that was inspired by a criminal case involving an 18-year-old relative accused of having sex with a 13-year-old.

The new law was carefully tailored to apply the same standard used for 17-year-olds to allow 18-year-old high school students to be charged with a less serious crime than child rape if they engaged in noncoercive sexual activity with teenagers under the age of consent, which in Utah is 14.

In a stated effort to keep the process fair, Adams, R-Layton, did not tell legislators, except for the bill’s sponsor — Senate Majority Leader Kirk Cullimore, R-Draper — that his granddaughter was currently the defendant in a Davis County criminal case falling into that narrow category.

The law did not apply retroactively to open cases, including to Adams’ granddaughter. It was, however, referenced at her sentencing. Court observers disagree on the extent to which legislators’ actions may have influenced the eventual plea bargain that allowed the granddaughter to avoid a prison sentence and sex offender designation.

The ties between Adams and the bill, which were first reported by the Salt Lake Tribune, have sparked bipartisan backlash, and at least two Utah Democrats have called for the president to resign, saying he lacked transparency about a new law that may have indirectly benefited his granddaughter.

In an interview with the Deseret News and KSL.com, Adams and Cullimore argued that the process behind the bill was proper, a view shared by some other legislators, and that the origins of the change points to the responsive nature of a part-time citizen legislature.

“There’s nothing unusual about how this bill came about,” Adams said. “Every bill that we run has some type of connection to a constituent, to a lobbyist, to an industry leader, to a personal experience a legislator has.”

What were the criminal charges?

Adams’ granddaughter was arrested in April 2023 after, as an 18-year-old, having sex with a 13-year-old twice, according to court documents. KSL.com and the Deseret News have chosen not to identify her but have noted the relationship to protect others.

She was charged as an adult with four first-degree felonies: two counts of child rape and two counts of child sodomy, which usually require someone convicted to register as a sex offender and serve time in prison.

The typical sentence for such convictions is 25 years to life in prison, although judges have discretion to impose shorter sentences of as little as six years to life in prison. Exceptions could also be made granting probation to first-time offenders who met other criteria.

When Adams learned of the charges against his 18-year-old granddaughter in 2023 he said he reached out to Cullimore, who is now the second-ranking Republican in Senate leadership and an attorney, to ask why state code allowed for a high school student to be sentenced to decades in prison for “a stupid mistake.”

Cullimore said he reacted with disbelief and asked Adams if he could contact Cara Tangaro, the defense attorney representing Adam’s granddaughter, for more information about the statutes involved.

In their conversations, Cullimore said he asked Tangaro to clarify the details of the case and to highlight changes to state code that would prevent future high school students from being charged with child rape when there was no violence or force involved.

Cullimore said he then gave these recommendations to the Office of Legislative Research and General Counsel, which drafted the bill language that was inserted into an omnibus criminal justice bill during the 2024 general legislative session.

Cullimore said he was the only one who knew about Adams’ granddaughter throughout the legislative process.

“I didn’t feel like it’s my place to be spilling the beans on their family issues,” he said. “This is either the right policy or it’s not, you know?”

Did the new law impact the case?

Tangaro, who continues to represent Adams’ granddaughter, denied having any hand in writing the legislation, and said she “collaborated with Sen. Cullimore and others to make a very small statutory adjustment” to prevent what she thought was an “overly harsh” outcome for high school students in “future cases.”

“I see absolutely zero problem with that,” Tangaro said. “This was a collaborative effort that was not done in the dark of night.”

The law was intentionally created not to be retroactive to avoid the appearance of benefiting Adams’ relative, according to Cullimore. In a statement, Tangaro said since the law was not retroactive it “did not directly affect” Adams’ granddaughter.

In a transcript of Adams’ granddaughter’s sentencing from August 2024 obtained by the Deseret News and KSL.com, deputy Davis County attorney Tamara Basquez and Tangaro each recognized the “legislative intent” of the new law as shifting the state’s position in plea bargain negotiations, and 2nd District Judge Rita Cornish said she had to “grapple” with the new law even though it was not retroactive.

At that same hearing, Basquez spoke on behalf of the mother of the victim, who did not attend, saying she felt “there hasn’t been adequate consequences” based on the harm done to her son.

“She just feels like there’s no protection for the innocence of her son and just that there’s a disregard for how it really has affected them,” Basquez added.

While all the parties were aware of the new law, it was not applied as if it were retroactive, according to Tangaro, because her client was not charged like a 17-year-old high schooler, who would have been charged with a third-degree felony of unlawful sexual activity.

After serving eight days in jail, 517 days of house arrest and undergoing sex offender therapy, Adams’ granddaughter eventually pleaded guilty to a second-degree felony and three counts of sexual battery, a class A misdemeanor, with a $1,500 fine, four years of probation and 120 hours of community service.

Democrats call for Adams’ resignation

On Friday, state Sen. Nate Blouin, D-Salt Lake City, released a statement demanding that Adams “do the right thing and resign.” Blouin alleged Adams had given “special treatment” to his relative and framed his involvement with the bill as an example of “abuses of power.”

Soon after, Utah Democratic Party Chair Brian King echoed Blouin’s call for Adams’ resignation, saying the Senate president’s personal connection to the bill was a “perfect example of the kind of corruption” that comes from one-party control of the state.

In later interviews, neither Democrat expressed opposition to the underlying policy. However, they said a different process should have been pursued by one of the most powerful members of Utah’s legislative branch to avoid an apparent conflict of interest.

On Monday, Blouin, who issued his statement without consulting Senate minority leadership, said he believed Adams had initiated the change “to weigh in on a criminal proceeding to get (a) family member out of further punishment.”

Every lawmaker bases legislation on personal experience, Blouin said, but the connection Adams had with the issue merited more transparency, which Blouin believes could have been achieved without revealing the identity of Adams’ granddaughter.

Lawmakers must make a disclosure about conflicts of interest on a form with the Utah Lieutenant Governor’s Office or on the floor before taking a vote. But the Legislature has determined this disclosure is usually only needed in relation to financial connections.

Blouin said he will consider filing a complaint with the Legislative Ethics Commission, which reviews violations of legislative member rules and can make a recommendation to the House or Senate ethics committee for enforcement.

As the former House minority leader, King said he questioned whether he should call for Adams’ resignation. He decided to move forward because he believes Adams’ decision not to reveal his personal connections shed light on a broader problem of legislative leadership not respecting the right of the public to an open legislative process.

“People rightly get upset if they think that we cut corners as a matter of drafting legislation,” King said. “The higher your position of leadership, the more careful you have to be, in terms of not giving anybody a reason to look at you and say that you’ve been acting inappropriately.”

On Monday, Adams firmly denied that he had any obligation to disclose his granddaughter’s case. He said doing so actually would have exerted more influence on the legislative process and would have distracted from the policy.

Adams claimed to have had no participation in the drafting of the provision or its placement in SB213, and said he did nothing to encourage the passage of the bill. He said he went out of the way to not discuss the bill and withheld his vote until its final passage.

“Nobody can say there was any undue influence on this bill, zero, none,” Adams said. “It was done ethically and morally perfect.”

Defenders say Adams did the right thing

Criticisms of Adams’ actions largely break down along two lines: that the president prompted a law change that ultimately may have helped his granddaughter’s defense attorney argue for a plea deal and that he should have been more transparent with fellow lawmakers and the public while the omnibus crime bill was being debated.

Adams and his defenders take issue with both.

Sen. Todd Weiler, who chairs the Senate Judiciary, Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee, said he was unaware of the charges against Adams’ granddaughter or any connection between Adams and the bill when it passed through his committee unopposed in February 2023. He said that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

“If he had told everybody, ‘Hey, this is to help my granddaughter, potentially, and I want you to vote for it,’ I think that would have been much worse,” the Woods Cross Republican said. “Instead, he asked Cullimore to look at it and did not weigh in on the process, did not pressure anybody to vote for it or against it, and even he himself was off the floor when it came through the Senate the first time.”

He added that leaders in both chambers of the Legislature typically run only one bill each year and that the president traditionally votes last in the Senate roll call so as not to put their finger on the scale of any one bill.

“I think that by him being more transparent, if you understand how the legislative process works, it would have been much worse, in my opinion,” Weiler said.

Asked if knowledge of Adams’ connection to the bill would have changed his vote, Weiler said it wouldn’t have, because he thinks the bill does the right thing by adding an option for accountability for high school students without landing them with lifetime penalties.

“My strong preference would be 18-year-olds shouldn’t be having sex with 13-year-olds,” he said. “It’s disgusting and it’s wrong, any way you look at it. But teenagers sometimes do stupid things.”

Weiler and others have also said that by making the law not retroactive, Adams and Cullimore avoided doing anything that would have impacted the pending prosecution of his granddaughter.

Lawmakers often enhance penalties for various crimes and several attorneys said it’s not out of the ordinary for prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges to consider new legislation during sentencing or in plea negotiations, even if the changes wouldn’t directly impact ongoing cases.

Adams said he was not aware that such legislative intent could factor into ongoing cases, and when asked directly if he intended SB213 to change the outcome of the plea deal said: “No, very clearly.”

“I didn’t have any expectation that it would have any impact on the outstanding case,” he added.

It’s not uncommon for lawmakers to enhance or create criminal penalties after a friend or family member is the victim of a crime, according to Utah Defense Attorneys Association Director Steve Burton, but it is rare for the GOP-controlled Legislature to lessen criminal penalties based on similar connections.

Burton thinks the change in how some 18-year-old offenders are treated is a good one, and thinks it’s unfair that lessening a penalty has sparked such outrage, when the opposite rarely does.

“It’s almost always the legislator kind of gets praised for bringing the issue to the attention of the Legislature and people rarely push back against it,” he said of bills taking a harder line on criminal justice, saying the media has shown a bias in reporting on a bill that rolls back penalties. “They don’t focus on the times when it’s trying to increase penalties and throw somebody in jail and throw away the key.”

Perfect process?

Seemingly every lawmaker aside from Cullimore was unaware of the case involving Adams’ granddaughter, including the House sponsor, then-House Majority Whip Karianne Lisonbee, R-Syracuse. Since finding out, she has expressed concern and said Cullimore’s provision did not go through the same vetting process with stakeholders as the rest of the bill.

“With good reason, Utah law stipulates that 13-year-old children cannot consent to sexual activity. There is only one victim in this story, and I haven’t lost sight of that as we all work to figure out what happened and how to proceed,” she said in a statement.

“Everything in SB213, except the addition of the language that affected the case, was discussed throughout the 2023 interim in a large working group in conjunction with (the Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice) and a series of separate meetings with criminal justice stakeholders. I attended all of the sessions and the topic of 18-year-olds in high school never came up, though the bill sponsor may have held other meetings on the added language.”

Lisonbee said: “Lawmakers and the public on both sides of the aisle are concerned about the process surrounding the adoption of this specific policy inside a 49-page working group bill.” She added that the new code “has not been applied to any other case” and suggested lawmakers “should review the code in question through an open and transparent process, working with all stakeholders to ensure the policy reflects community values.”

“We must be careful to protect innocent children and ensure that the criminal justice response is appropriate to the crime,” she added. “I’m confident we can find the right balance as we continue to work on reviewing and refining this policy.”

Cullimore conceded that the two short provisions stemming from his conversations with Tangaro did not emerge from the interim working group meetings that produced the rest of SB213.

But he said his actions prove he wasn’t “trying to play ‘hide the ball.’”

The provisions concerning the sentencing of sexual crimes committed by 18-year-old high schoolers were included in the initial version of SB213, which had been reviewed by all the same stakeholders that worked on the bill before it was introduced on the floor.

The provision was either endorsed or not opposed by the Utah Sentencing Commission, the Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice, the Utah Defense Attorney Association, the Statewide Association of Prosecutors, Adult Probation and Parole and state law enforcement agencies and associations, according to Cullimore.

The specific provision that related to Adams’ granddaughter was also mentioned by Cullimore in every committee hearing and floor debate. In the House, Lisonbee read aloud the entire provision during discussion of the bill before a vote.

“There was an inference that this was thrown in at the last minute. The evidence speaks for itself — it was not,” Cullimore said. “We never shied from the policy.”

‘I just don’t see it’

Adams admits that his granddaughter made a mistake, but said she had fulfilled the penalties imposed by the criminal justice system. He said she was arrested at her high school and spent more than 500 days confined at home with an ankle monitor after serving eight days in jail.

“What a humiliating event,” he said. “Now we’re heaping on her a scarlet letter on her forehead. It’s wrong. The stories are wrong. … She’s been convicted and tried, and now we’re doing it again in the media and it’s wrong.”

Some of Adams’ defenders have acknowledged that the situation may look problematic from the outside, even if they believe Adams acted appropriately and that to disclose his connection early in the process would have brought even more backlash for having an undue influence on the bill.

“I understand this is a bad look, and I understand a lot of people have these fears or suspicions that people in power are taking advantage of the system. I get all that,” Weiler said. “But when I look at this closely, without the bill being retroactive, I just don’t see it.”

But Adams disagrees that the situation could be read to reflect poorly on him or the Legislature and he became heated when asked if he should have handled things differently.

“The bill passed because of the policy, and the media is spinning this (that) I had some type of influence. Find the influence. It’s unfindable,” he said. “It may have run because I brought it, but every case that we run up here is brought by a legislator, OK?”

“That is the process. The process was perfect.”