SALT LAKE CITY — Defense attorneys for the man charged in the death of University of Utah student Mackenzie Lueck acknowledge there is enough evidence for his separate sexual assault charges to advance to trial.
Ayoola Adisa Ajayi’s lawyers are pushing back, however, on an allegation of aggravated kidnapping. He faces the first-degree felony charge after a woman told investigators he pinned her arms down and assaulted her during a dinner date at his Salt Lake City home in March 2018.
“Everyone’s in agreement that there will be a bindover on forcible sexual abuse, because at a preliminary hearing, all inferences are taken in favor of the state,” Ajayi’s defense attorney Neal Hamilton said after the hearing. “And although we do have concerns and issues with the evidence, we acknowledge there’s certainly enough there for bindover at this point.”
Prosecutors argued Ajayi held the woman’s arms down before assaulting her, an action distinct from the alleged sexual contact and that supported the kidnapping charge.
Hamilton countered that the alleged behavior may amount to unlawful detention, which fits a lesser, third-degree felony. But he said the woman wasn’t held for a substantial period of time or in a life-threatening circumstance, and any actions his client took to block her from leaving were not separate from the assault.
Judge Vernice Trease said she will rule Dec. 20 on whether prosecutors have met their burden of probable cause to support the kidnapping charge. In the meantime, she scheduled a two-day jury trial to begin in February on three counts of forcible sexual abuse, a second-degree felony.
In place of testifying at the preliminary hearing, the victim of the alleged rape signed a two-page document detailing how she says Ajayi assaulted her. Ajayi’s defense team had sought to call her to the stand for cross-examination, pointing out what it said were inconsistencies between the court document and her initial statements to police.
But that won’t happen ahead of a trial. Trease agreed with prosecutors and the woman’s attorney that Utah’s victim rights law protects her from being forced to take the stand at the preliminary hearing.
A quiet Ajayi appeared in glasses and a yellow jail uniform Wednesday, speaking only to reply, “Yes, your honor,” to questions from the judge.
Investigators said they learned about the assault allegation, which predates Lueck’s death by more than a year, as they gathered evidence in the homicide.
Lueck, a 23-year-old student from El Segundo, California, met Ajayi early on the morning of June 17 at Hatch Park in North Salt Lake and the two went to Ajayi’s house, investigators said. Her charred remains were found by police in a shallow grave in Logan Canyon on July 3.
Ajayi, originally from Nigeria, could face the death penalty if convicted in her death. A preliminary hearing in that case is set for March.
In a third criminal case, he faces 19 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, a second-degree felony, after police said they found child pornography on devices seized from his home during the murder investigation. He has not yet entered pleas to any of the charges.