College student will be among first to test new law’s impact on sex assault cases
by Cristina Flores Wednesday, April 3rd 2019 KUTV NEWS Channel 2 Salt Lake City
SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — Tabitha Bell, 18, now a college student in California, will come back to Utah to take advantage of a new law that gives victims of sexual assault a second chance to take their alleged perpetrators to trial.
House Bill 281 — Prosecution Review Amendments — which goes into effect on May 13, will give the Utah Attorney General’s Office authority to give a second look to first-degree felony cases that were vetted by police, but got no action from local prosecutors and never made it to trial.
Bell said she relived the pain of her assault in police interviews and in interviews with prosecutors. She then lived through more pain when prosecutors declined to take her case to trial — even though police felt it had merit.
“If you are going to put yourself through all that emotional trauma, you should have something come of it,” she said.
Paul Cassell, a law professor at the University of Utah and a former judge, said sexual assault cases will be most impacted by the new law.
Utah, he said, has a low rate of prosecution for sexual assault cases. He’s not sure why.
“I think part of it is prosecutors are just demanding a very high level of evidence to move forward. Higher than in other parts of the country,” he said.
Dr. Julie Valentine, a professor at Brigham young University and a forensic nurse who has been a leader in advocating for Utah sex assault victims and for more prosecutions, said her research found that in Salt Lake County alone, only 6% of sexual assault cases make it to trial.
Of those cases, only 6% lead to convictions.
That’s likely because prosecutors only take on the cases where they feel very confident they’ll get a conviction.
Valentine said sexual assault cases are challenging because, often, there are no witnesses and, often, the defense attorneys attack the victims during trial.
“We are not trying to imply they are easy cases, we are saying we need more prosecutions of these cases,” Valentine said.