Attorneys accuse Utah County Sheriff's Office of misleading the public about ritual abuse case

PROVO — Nearly three years after a high-profile child ritual abuse case was reopened, a Utah judge has dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning it can never be refiled.

The investigating agency, the Utah County Sheriff's Office, responded to that decision with a scathing rebuke, scolding the courts in a press release for permanently dismissing the case, calling the outcome "abhorrent."

Multiple attorneys are now challenging several claims in the agency's statement that they say are false and misleading to the public.

"They are misrepresenting the facts," said Provo attorney Caleb Proulx. "Why they're doing that when it's easily provable that that's what they're doing is beyond me."

The Utah County Sheriff's Office has declined to answer questions about the claims made in its statement or participate in an interview with the KSL Investigators.

Evidence and discovery issues

Proulx has closely followed the case against former therapist David Hamblin, 70, since it was filed in 2022.

Former Utah County Attorney David Leavitt and Utah County Sheriff Mike Smith publicly traded barbs in a bizarre series of back-to-back press conferences in June 2022. Leavitt called the reopening of a decades-old case naming him in allegations of ritual child abuse a political attack. Smith denied the claim.

"First off, this is not a politically motivated investigation," Smith said in a news conference held just after Leavitt's.

Driving the controversy was a 151-page victim statement naming Leavitt, his wife, and several others as part of a group alleged to have practiced ritual sexual abuse of children in Utah.

Proulx represents his in-laws, who were among the many people named in the victim statement.

Prosecutors later filed sexual abuse charges against Hamblin in September 2022, resurrecting a case that had previously been dismissed in 2014 for evidentiary reasons.

On Feb. 19, the second special prosecutor assigned to the case filed a motion to dismiss the case without prejudice. His motion cited evidentiary concerns and discovery problems.

In March, 4th District Judge Roger Griffin issued a written ruling, again dismissing the case, but this time with prejudice — meaning it can never be refiled. He found the case "is rife with problems with evidence and discovery issues."

In his ruling, Griffin wrote, "The second special prosecutor also informed the court he had reached his conclusion that a dismissal was warranted for evidence concerns due to his assessment of the case as a neutral or independent prosecutor with significant experience. The second special prosecutor properly informed the court that he takes seriously his ethical obligations under the rules and the law to only proceed with cases that have a reasonable likelihood of obtaining a conviction."

'Demonstrably false' claims

In response to the judge's decision to dismiss the case with prejudice, the Utah County Sheriff's Office issued a rare rebuke, making several claims which attorneys tell KSL are flat out false.

For example, the agency wrote, "on Oct. 4, 2023, the previous prosecutor's office reviewed with the defense all the evidence that had been provided, and the defense attorney acknowledged that they had received everything."

Defense attorney Leah Aston told KSL Investigators that is false, writing in a statement, "Mr. Hamblin's defense counsel has never acknowledged that all discovery was provided in this case. This claim is false, and a simple review of the case history confirms that defense counsel has been doggedly seeking discovery in this matter for years. As of today, defense counsel still does not have all of the discovery and likely never will."

Court records show Aston filed several motions seeking discovery, including one filed on Oct. 13, 2023. Another motion filed in February this year details additional late disclosures of potentially exculpatory evidence, including an interview investigators conducted in September 2022 that was not provided through discovery until August 2024, as well as a police report dated May of 2023 that was not provided to the defense until February of this year.

In its statement, the Utah County Sheriff's Office said the agency anticipated the court would hold an evidentiary hearing and investigators would be able to detail the evidence they had provided and address concerns about the discovery process, but said "an evidentiary hearing was never requested, and thus never occurred."

In her motion filed on Feb. 14, Aston called for sanctions and requested an evidentiary hearing to determine whether Utah County investigators wrongfully withheld evidence in the case.

In its statement, the Utah County Sheriff's Office also wrote, "The court also relied on a statement from investigators allegedly expressing disappointment that they were required to provide discovery before a preliminary hearing was held in this case. But that statement was taken wholly out of context and had nothing to do with providing evidence to the defense. Rather, investigators were expressing disappointment only that certain evidence had been made available to the public. These facts refute the court's assertion that the sheriff's office was attempting to delay disclosing evidence in any way."

A transcript of that recording was included in a motion filed by the state last year, documenting the investigator's statements during an interview in May 2023:

"(The discovery order) came sooner than we expected. Eventually all that stuff was going to come in because R. and E. are corroborating witnesses to the abuse that the third victim suffered. Which means anything that they have said about any type of abuse suffered by David Hamblin is going to have to be released to the defense. It is exculpatory, they have a right to look at it, they have a right to verify it. Um, we were just hoping we could get at least through a preliminary hearing before that happened.

"The judge ruled no. Before we have a prelim, all that needs to be released to them, so. That is being released to them. And so specifically, like what we talked about when we first came over, like the journals that the girls wrote in David Hamblin's first case, all of those are going to be released to defense. But quite frankly, I am pretty sure the defense already had it because that's all online already.

. . .

"Yeah, so all of that's gonna go to the defense, which again, there was a sense of inevitability about it, eventually it was going to get there. We were just hoping to hold off on that for a period of time, just strategically as far as how we were working through the progression of the prosecution. So that was kind of a setback, just as far as timing, but not the fact that it was going to come out in the end anyway."

KSL legal analyst Greg Skordas reviewed the agency's claim and the transcript provided in court records.

"It appears that the state, either the law enforcement or the prosecution, or whoever, was trying to at least stall the release of information," Skordas said. "Due process requires that an accused is provided all the information against them, whether it's exculpatory or not, at the soonest possible date. There's no reason for the state to withhold disclosing information."

"It's demonstrably false," Proulx said of the agency's claim about the investigator's comments in the recording. "You've got a law enforcement agency making substantial and material misrepresentations about these sorts of things and it's extremely troubling. It's very upsetting, frankly."

As the case has dragged on, he said his family members have been the subject of severe harassment. They've even had to seek stalking injunctions.

"It's just really hard," he said. "I think this has damaged a lot of people. It's harmed a lot of people."

A rare dismissal

Skordas said it's very rare for a judge to dismiss a case with prejudice.

"I think what happened here is very unusual," he said. "For a judge to just take a case away from the state and dismiss it with prejudice — meaning the state can never bring it again — means that there were some errors, significant errors, maybe from the part of law enforcement or the prosecution, that cannot be cured in the judge's opinion."

While it's expected that law enforcement agencies and parties to criminal cases will disagree with judges' rulings, Skordas said he finds it troubling when judges are attacked for their decisions.

"Judges are there for a reason and they are there to be fair to make sure both sides are treated equally," he said. "I think it's disingenuous for people to attack a judge who's really — they're not being proactive. They're reacting to situations that are in front of them and trying to make the decision that's correct based on all the information they have. I really take issue when people attack a judge."

The KSL Investigators reached out to the Utah State Courts seeking reaction to the public criticism over the resolution of the case. In a statement, a spokesperson wrote, "While we are unable to provide comment on specific cases, we would point to the case history and let the record speak for itself."

Nathan Evershed, the special prosecutor most recently assigned to the case, declined to make any public comment as Hamblin still has another child sexual abuse case pending in Sanpete County.

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