When the prosecutor reviews a conviction
The first published finding of Salt Lake County’s Conviction Integrity Unit is a useful place to examine District Attorney Sim Gill’s view of a prosecutor’s responsibility.
An elected prosecutor
Salt Lake County voters first elected Gill district attorney in November 2010. His undergraduate subjects at the University of Utah were history and philosophy. At Lewis and Clark’s law school in Oregon he earned his law degree and studied environmental and natural resources law. The county credits him with work on alternatives to prosecution, including mental health and veterans courts.
An answer that could be revisited
On December 2, 2020, the office published the first finding of its Conviction Integrity Unit. The reviewers recommended leaving the conviction and sentence in place. Gill accepted that recommendation and said new information could justify revisiting a claim. A promise of accountability has more content when readers can see a published finding, the recommendation and the elected prosecutor’s response. The question is especially important when the very office that prosecuted a case is asked to examine the conviction afterward.
I write as a Mormon historian interested in how civil power is exercised in Salt Lake County. A prosecutor’s published reasons give citizens, including critics, a text on which to exercise their own judgment.
What an incorrect birth date did to a criminal case
The panel’s next published result shows how much can turn on a single entry. In its May 25, 2021 report on Marlon Lambur-Navarro, it found that he was seventeen when the offense occurred and when the district court accepted his plea. The charging paper had assigned him a birth date that made him eighteen. The panel found that the discrepancy had placed the plea before a court without jurisdiction to accept it. It reached that conclusion even though the plea and sentencing transcripts were unavailable.
The report went to Gill. On August 24 his office announced that it had accepted the recommendation and filed a motion to vacate both convictions. The sequence matters to a citizen reading the announcement. The panel investigated and made a finding, the elected prosecutor asked for relief, and the request was addressed to a court. In a case that turned on an age entered on paper, the issue reached beyond the mechanics of filing. Which court had lawful authority to take a young person’s plea?