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Douglas Lovell makes third appeal to Utah Supreme Court

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Douglas Lovell makes third appeal to Utah Supreme Court


SALT LAKE CITY – Douglas A. Lovell has twice been sentenced to die for abducting and murdering a South Ogden woman in August of 1985. On Friday, Lovell’s attorney told the Utah Supreme Court he deserves a third shot at sentencing.

It marked the fourth time over the last nearly 40 years that lawyers have argued in person before Utah’s highest court over issues in the case. The latest trip focused primarily on allegations of discussion of religious matters, such as Lovell’s excommunication from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and “infected” testimony during a 2015 trial.

Origins of the case against Doug Lovell

In April of 1985, Lovell followed a South Ogden woman named Joyce Yost home from a supper club in Clearfield. Lovell sexually assaulted Yost in her own driveway, abducted her, and assaulted her again at his own home. After several hours, Yost convinced Lovell to let her go free, promising not to report what he’d done to the police.

Once safely returned home, Yost called police. A Clearfield police detective arrested Lovell a short time later on suspicion of rape. The Davis County Attorney’s Office then filed felony charges against Lovell.

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Yost subsequently testified about the events at a preliminary hearing and the case was set for trial. Through a series of missteps, Lovell was allowed to leave custody in spite of a judge’s order demanding he be jailed pending the trial.

While out of jail, Lovell hired two different men to kill Yost on his behalf, in order to prevent her from testifying at the upcoming trial. Both of those would-be hitmen backed out, so on the night of Aug. 10, 1985, Lovell crept into Yost’s apartment through an unlocked window, slashed her with a knife and then allegedly took Yost into the mountains east of Ogden where he strangled her to death.

Yost’s disappearance caused alarm for her family and police, but it did not derail the criminal trial. A Davis County jury convicted Lovell on counts of aggravated sexual assault and aggravated kidnapping, even in Yost’s absence. A judge sentenced Lovell to the Utah State Prison on two terms of five years to life, with a mandatory minimum stay of 15 years.

Capital murder charge for the death of Joyce Yost

The South Ogden Police Department’s investigation into Yost’s disappearance stalled for several years, until Lovell’s ex-wife Rhonda Buttars confessed to a detective in 1991 that she’d helped Lovell destroy evidence after he killed Yost. The Weber County Attorney’s Office offered Buttars immunity from criminal charges if she, in exchange, cooperated as a witness.

Buttars twice carried a hidden audio recorder into the Utah State Prison and captured Lovell making confessions on tape. That evidence allowed the Weber County Attorney’s Office to file a first-degree felony capital murder charge against Lovell in May of 1992.

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Lovell’s defense attorney entered into plea negotiations with prosecutors later that year. By the summer of 1993, the two sides reached an agreement: Lovell would plead guilty and lead investigators to Yost’s body, and in exchange, prosecutors would recommend the judge sentence Lovell to life in prison without the chance for parole.

That July, Lovell repeatedly took detectives to a site along the Old Snowbasin Road near Pineview Reservoir and told them that’s where he’d buried Yost’s body. Weeks of searches there failed to turn up any sign of human remains. As a result, the plea agreement was invalidated and the judge sentenced Lovell to death.

Taking back Doug Lovell’s guilty plea

Lovell attempted to withdraw his guilty plea in the aftermath of the death verdict, but the trial court prevented him from doing so.

In his first direct appeal of the sentence, Lovell argued his defense attorney had been ineffective, due in part to a conflict of interest. The Utah Supreme Court ruled against him, affirming the death sentence in 1999.

Lovell then petitioned the high court again over the trial court’s denial of his effort to withdraw the guilty plea, arguing the trial court judge had failed to properly advise him of all the rights he waived by pleading guilty. The Supreme Court sent that matter back to the lower court for further hearings, which again led to a Second District Court judge denying Lovell’s motion to withdraw.

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Lovell appealed that decision and in 2011, the Utah Supreme Court agreed the sentencing judge had made a technical error that invalidated Lovell’s death sentence.

The Supreme Court sent Lovell’s case back to Utah’s Second District Court, where it was set for a trial. That trial took place in March of 2015.

Conceding guilt for killing Joyce Yost

Because of the strong evidence against Lovell, including his own prior admissions in court to Yost’s murder, the trial defense team conceded Lovell’s guilt before the jury.

Yost’s murder took place at a time before Utah law allowed for a sentence of life without parole. Because of that, Lovell was allowed to choose whether the jury would have the option of choosing life without parole at sentencing. He chose instead to be sentenced under the law as it existed in 1985, meaning the jurors were only allowed the choice of death or life with the possibility of parole.

Utah law requires juries in capital cases eligible for the death penalty to weigh “aggravating” and “mitigating” factors when deciding for or against death. In Lovell’s 2015 trial, the jury unanimously decided the aggravating factors presented by the prosecution outweighed the mitigation evidence supplied by the defense.

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Lovell lost his bid for a chance at parole, receiving a death sentence for the second time.

Doug Lovell’s current appeal

Lovell immediately filed a new appeal, focused on allegations his trial attorneys were ineffective. The appeal raised many specific issues, but chief among them were questions about whether witness testimony during the trial about religious matters might’ve prejudiced the jury.

During the sentencing phase of the 2015 trial, Lovell’s defense attorneys had called multiple former bishops for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who previously ministered to Lovell at the Utah State Prison. Each of those men had intended to speak to their opinions that Lovell was remorseful and deserved a chance for parole.

The testimony during the trial had at times veered into discussion of Latter-day Saint doctrine, Lovell’s excommunication from the church after Yost’s murder, and heavenly forgiveness. In her appeal, Lovell’s appellate attorney, Colleen Coebergh, argued the trial defense team failed to object to improper topics.

“Injecting, in front of a jury, religious topics, is a corrupt practice. It cannot be tolerated,” Coebergh said during oral arguments before the Utah Supreme Court Friday.

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Coebergh told the justices such discussion of religious doctrine during the trial improperly signaled to jurors they could make decisions based on factors beyond the factual evidence of the case. Some of the justices also pursued this line of thought when questioning Mark Field, an attorney for the Utah Attorney General’s Office.

“I’m talking about subtle influences,” Associate Chief Justice John Pearce said. “I’m talking about changing the way they view the evidence that Mr. Lovell was trying to put on about being a changed person.”

“Fair enough,” Field replied.

“I think you concede it was improper for the prosecution to inject this into the trial,” Pearce said.

“I do,” Field replied.

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However, Field argued that didn’t warrant sending Lovell’s case back for a new trial or sentencing.

“This particular testimony was a small fraction of the evidence that came in,” Field said. “Even assuming that counsel was deficient in not objecting at that point, I don’t think that there’s a reasonable likelihood that there would’ve been a different outcome but for that.”

Justice for Joyce Yost

There is no timeline for when the Supreme Court will issue a decision on Lovell’s latest appeal.

Lovell, 66, remains incarcerated at the Utah State Correctional Facility. Previous reporting by KSL revealed the Utah Department of Corrections has moved him out of maximum security under a program called Last Chance that rewards death row inmates for good behavior.

The murder of Joyce Yost, the search for her remains and the criminal case against Douglas Lovell are covered in detail in the KSL Podcasts series COLD season 2: Justice for Joyce.

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Utah

A new Utah law was hailed as a win for air quality. But what impact will it have?

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A new Utah law was hailed as a win for air quality. But what impact will it have?


Note to readers • The following story is Part 2 of two stories reported by The Utah Investigative Journalism Project in partnership with The Salt Lake Tribune and support from the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. Read Part 1 here.

As Utah continued its trend of violating federal air pollution limits, state air quality officials asked the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for help in 2017.

On NOAA’s first day of data collection, aimed at better understanding the atmospheric chemistry above the state, an airplane flew over US Magnesium in Tooele County. It picked up some of the highest levels of halogens — a group of chemicals including chlorine — that the agency has ever measured.

That finding, revealed in a study published in 2023, has been debated ever since — from its accuracy to what it should mean for how the state governs Utah’s air quality.

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This spring, Senate Majority Leader Kirk Cullimore claimed a victory when Gov. Spencer Cox signed HB420 into law, giving the Utah Division of Air Quality (DAQ) new authority to regulate the emission of halogens.

Halogens include chemicals whose interaction in the environment “worsens our winter inversions on the Wasatch Front by 10 to 25%,” said Cullimore, R-Cottonwood Heights, who sponsored the bill.

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Sen. Kirk Cullimore, R-Salt Lake City, during the 2025 legislative session, Wednesday February. 26, 2025.

But it’s not yet clear whether HB420 will result in any additional, independent monitoring of air quality near the magnesium plant — the absence of which has already impacted research into Utah’s persistently poor air quality.

Federal and state regulation of US Magnesium relies significantly on self-reports from the company about its emissions. And even if the state installed air monitors near US Magnesium, it’s unlikely that they would pick up everything — because sensors capable of detecting all of its halogen emissions in real time were only recently invented, according to Jessica Haskins, an assistant professor of atmospheric chemistry at the University of Utah.

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Scientists have brought these devices to the state for research purposes, but only temporarily, she said. Permanently installing a monitor capable of measuring all of the plant’s halogen emissions would cost the state about $1 million, Haskins estimated, which she suspects would be outside the state’s budget.

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Jessica Haskins, an assistant professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Utah, in Salt Lake City on Thursday, June 5, 2025.

HB420 did not include specific directives about how monitoring related to the bill should be carried out, DAQ spokesperson Ashley Sumner said, adding that the division is still weighing its options.

The air quality monitors currently nearest to US Magnesium, Sumner said, are located in the town of Erda, on a site state regulators selected because they believed it to be representative of the average conditions experienced by the majority of Tooele Valley residents. Air monitoring is focused, per federal regulation, on the state’s most populous areas, she said.

For now, US Magnesium has idled the plant following equipment breakdowns and a drop in lithium prices.

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The question of bromine

(Steve Brown | NOAA) Carrie Womack, at left, is seen in 2017 with other researchers in the plane used in the Utah Winter Fine Particulate Study in January and February. The study was an effort by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Chemical Sciences Division and the Cooperative Institute for Research In Environmental Sciences. Womack works in the Chemical Sciences Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado.

When NOAA began the study in 2017, it didn’t plan to look specifically at US Magnesium, according to Carrie Womack, a researcher in the NOAA Chemical Sciences Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, and one of the lead authors on the 2023 report.

Instead, it was responding to Utah’s DAQ query about why years of attempts to improve the state’s air quality weren’t curbing the trend of federal air pollution violations.

The emissions that NOAA measured on that first day matched what US Magnesium had reported about its releases of chlorine, specifically, Womack said. But the mining company’s monitoring didn’t capture the release of another halogen, bromine, because air quality regulations at the time did not require tracking or reporting it.

And that chemical turned out to be responsible for a good deal of the chemical reaction causing the state’s poor winter air quality, according to NOAA’s research. It concluded that emissions from US Magnesium’s West Desert facility could account for as much as a quarter of the small particulate pollution that famously accumulates in Utah’s air most winters.

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But US Magnesium believes the study’s conclusions are “non-factual and … based on a series of poorly executed measurements, estimates, and conclusions,” the company said in an April 1 statement signed by CEO Ron Thayer and Rob Hartman, its environmental manager.

The company said it has hired a third-party engineering firm to conduct its own study of the company’s emissions and their impact on local air quality.

While it is accurate that US Magnesium is the only significant source of halogens in the area, Thayer and Hartman said, data from the DAQ show no direct correlation between its emissions and the state’s overall air quality.

“As USM production has decreased over the last eight years,” Thayer and Hartman said, “the average Salt Lake Valley smog related particulates have remained consistent.”

Indeed, the plant’s shutdown of magnesium mining in 2022 and of lithium mining last year have had no apparent impact on air quality trends in northern Utah, according to the state DAQ. State monitors have never observed a correlation between overall air quality in the state and daily operations at US Magnesium, Sumner said.

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A complex equation

Womack said this is to be expected. The relationship between US Magnesium’s halogen emissions and wintertime particulate pollution is complex, and dependent on other factors such as temperature and snowfall, she said.

The presence of pollutants from other sources, such as cars and wildfires, also changes the equation. Barring an unlikely, exact repeat of the conditions seen in the winter of 2017, it’s improbable that a correlation with US Magnesium’s operations would show up in day-to-day air quality trends, Womack said.

She also noted that the study only considered data from 2017, a year when US Magnesium reported higher-than-usual chlorine emissions. Because the company did not report bromine emissions at the time, it’s difficult to say whether bromine emissions were also elevated in 2017, Womack said.

But if they were, it is possible that the resulting calculations by NOAA represent uncharacteristically high emissions by US Magnesium — and an inaccurate snapshot of its contributions to air quality in normal years.

These facts point to a need for greater, long-term study of emissions and air chemistry in Utah, Womack said, though she says the agency stands by its conclusions about the company’s contributions to air pollution in Utah.

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“That was interesting to us because it’s not that often that you come across a source you didn’t know was there emitting a huge amount of something that has a negative impact on air quality,” Womack said, adding that NOAA took its time with analyzing the data after its collection to ensure its figures were accurate.

How Utah has and hasn’t taken action

The NOAA study triggered a push in 2023 by regulators and state lawmakers to pass a law that would impose limits on emissions of bromine from US Magnesium, but HB220 was ultimately rewritten to require a broader study of halogen emissions in northern Utah.

The Renco Group, US Magnesium’s parent company, gave $50,000 to Cox’s reelection campaign after the bill was rewritten, although US Magnesium said the donation was probably a routine expression of support for Cox’s larger policies by its parent company.

“USM has NEVER solicited assistance from Governor Cox regarding air quality regulations or proposed State emissions legislation,” Hartman and Thayer said. In a previous statement about the donation, a spokesperson for Cox noted: “The governor has no control over who chooses to contribute to his campaign.”

State lawmakers returned to the issue this year with the passage of HB420.

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In a separate email to the Utah Investigative Journalism Project, Thayer said that unlike the first proposed law, this new law took a recommendation “periodically promoted by [US Magnesium] in the past” into account, by requiring the company to install “additional ducting to collect and treat one chlorine containing vapor stream in the magnesium plant.”

Thayer later clarified that the additional ducting in question would “process chlorine during downtime hours on the chlorine reduction burner,” which is a critical control device responsible for limiting chlorine emissions.

A sweeping notice of violation issued by the Environmental Protection Agency against US Magnesium in March 2023 focused on the chlorine reduction burner. It alleged the plant operated between January 2016 and July 2022 with the burner offline some 1,100 times — resulting in chlorine emissions in excess of the company’s permit during those years.

No further action has occurred, an EPA spokesperson said, because US Magnesium’s plant had been closed for months when the notice was issued.

HB420 does not specify what, exactly, US Magnesium must install to control emissions. The bill refers to “halogens” broadly and not to bromine specifically, and calls for the Utah DAQ to analyze which technologies or pollution control systems might best address halogen emissions — likely opening the door to the exact solution described by Thayer.

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However, Thayer also said that “none of this is relevant at this time” because the plant is no longer operating, and the ducting in question would only be installed “should” the company decide to restart the plant.

The continuing challenge

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Lexi Tuddenham at the Great Salt Lake, on Monday, June 2, 2025.

Lexi Tuddenham, executive director of HEAL Utah, said she hopes that funding associated with HB420 will prove large enough to install regulatory-grade monitors closer to US Magnesium.

The longstanding lack of independent, granular data on the company’s emissions presents a huge barrier to identifying regulatory actions that could help improve Utah’s air quality, she said.

The magnesium plant has been essentially protected by the region’s remoteness, low population and its longstanding use as an environmental “sacrifice zone” by the U.S. military, she said, which historically worked to discredit the concerns of Tooele residents in order to avoid criticism of its own operations there.

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Tooele County was previously identified as a “Justice40” community, a designation for census tracts with significant historical environmental harms due to the presence of things like abandoned mine or military sites.

The initiative ensured that at least 40% of certain federal incentives — such as investments in affordable housing or electric school buses — went to such areas. An executive order signed by President Donald Trump ended the Justice40 program in January.

And since then, the Environmental Protection Agency under the Trump administration has said it is reconsidering whether the northern Wasatch Front should have to adhere to strict federal air quality standards for ozone.

“That area in Tooele and Grantsville, where HEAL was founded, has been particularly hard hit over the decades, between the Dugway Proving Ground, the biological agents that were tested in the area, the incineration of chemical weapons including things like nerve gas, and the [nuclear waste] storage facilities out at Energy Solutions,” Tuddenham said.

The lack of a large public outcry about emissions from US Magnesium “represents what always happens — people with less political power and less money get less voice,” she said. “ … And it’s just devastating, but unsurprising, that these things are still happening.”

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Jess Anderson, Utah’s top cop, is retiring. Here’s who will replace him.

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Jess Anderson, Utah’s top cop, is retiring. Here’s who will replace him.


Anderson said he plans to spend more time with his family after seven years as public safety commissioner.

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Jess Anderson, Utah’s Commissioner of Public Safety, in his office in 2021. Anderson announced Thursday that he was retiring after seven years as commissioner and more than 25 years working for the Department of Public Safety.

The commissioner of the Utah Department of Public Safety announced Thursday that he’s retiring after seven years on the job and more than 25 years with the department.

Jess Anderson said on social media that he was retiring to “begin a new chapter with more time for my family.” He added that working with Utah’s Department of Public Safety has been “the honor of a lifetime.”

Gov. Spencer Cox has nominated Beau Mason to replace him, Cox’s office announced Thursday.

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During Anderson’s tenure, he was a leader in the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and a summer of protests against police violence in 2020. His department also eliminated Utah’s backlog of untested rape kits, and he led an unprecedented — but ultimately unsuccessful — effort to decertify Brigham Young University’s police department.

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah Commissioner of Public Safety Jess Anderson addresses the Multicultural Commission and Martin Luther King Jr. Commission as they meet at the State Office building by the Utah Capitol on Thursday, July 16, 2020, to talk about ways to address systemic racism in the state.

Cox said in a Thursday statement that “our state is stronger” because of Anderson’s leadership. “We’re deeply grateful for his service,” he added, “and wish him the very best in the years ahead.”

Senate President Stuart Adams said in a statement that Anderson has been a “steady hand in uncertain times.”

“For over two decades, he has answered the call, leading with professionalism, unity and accountability, helping to ensure that Utah is not only safe but also prepared for the future,” the statement reads. “Always putting Utah families first, Commissioner Anderson built bridges between communities, law enforcement and government. His service was never motivated by recognition but grounded in a sense of duty. In times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and periods of civil unrest, he led with humility, strength and clarity.”

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Mason’s appointment as the new commissioner is subject to Utah Senate approval, Senate Chief of Staff Aundrea Peterson confirmed. He has served as DPS’s deputy commissioner since 2023, according to the governor’s office, after rising through the ranks of the Utah Highway Patrol in his 20-year career.

“I’m grateful for the chance to keep serving Utah and to build on the strong foundation already in place,” Mason said in a statement. “By looking out for the talented people at DPS and working hand-in-hand with our partners across the state and nation, we can keep every community safe and moving forward together.”

(Courtesy Utah Department of Public Safety) Beau Mason



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Utah college student arrested by ICE in Grand Junction granted bail

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Utah college student arrested by ICE in Grand Junction granted bail


A 19-year-old Utah college student arrested by federal immigration agents after a Mesa County sheriff’s deputy shared information about her in a law enforcement group chat has been granted bail, her attorney said Wednesday.

Caroline Dias Goncalves was pulled over for a traffic stop on Interstate 70 near Fruita on June 5 because she was following a tractor-trailer too closely, the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office said.

The deputy let her go with a warning but shared information about the encounter in an encrypted Signal group chat between local and federal law enforcement that was used for drug enforcement.

Federal agents arrested Dias Goncalves a short time later in Grand Junction and are detaining her at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Aurora. Her family did not know where she was for two days, according to reporting from the Salt Lake Tribune.

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Dias Goncalves, who attends the University of Utah, came to the U.S. from Brazil with her family when she was 7 and overstayed a tourist visa. She has a pending asylum application, according to the Tribune.

Colorado law enforcement is barred from cooperating with civil immigration enforcement under state law, and the sheriff’s office said the agency did not know the information would be used for immigration activity.

Sheriff’s officials have refused to say what information the deputy shared about Dias Goncalves, but said the agency is no longer a part of the Signal chat.

Dias Goncalves was granted bail by an immigration judge on Wednesday, advocacy group TheDream.US said in a news release. The organization did not provide details about the terms of her bail or when she will be released, but said she will be released “in the coming days” and asked for privacy for Dias Goncalves and her family.

A spokesperson for TheDream.US could not immediately be reached for comment.

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Her arrest and detention should not have happened in the first place, her attorney Jon Hyman from the Denver firm Peak Justice Group said in a statement.

“She has no criminal record, was not shown a warrant, and as the Mesa County Sheriff’s office has since revealed, her arrest was only attributable to improper coordination between local law enforcement and ICE,” he said. “Investigations should continue to ensure that other young immigrants in Colorado do not have to go through the same harrowing experiences.”

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