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A court’s secrecy order blocks access to the investigation into a BYU police lieutenant who shared info with the Honor Code office

-Jessica Miller Salt Lake Tribune Originally published Friday, March 8, 2019

A lieutenant with Brigham Young University’s police department took information
from private records created by other Utah County law enforcement agencies and
passed it on to university officials investigating students for breaking school rules.
His actions sparked a criminal investigation that lasted more than two years and has
been done for months.
So, how many records involving how many students did Lt. Aaron Rhoades access?
That information is not public.
Neither are the answers to questions like these: At whose direction did he look at the
nonpublic police databases? What kind of information did he share? How did the
university use that information?

Greg Ferbrache — a former prosecutor with the attorney general’s office who is now in private practice — said the secrecy orders are not intended to keep the public from knowing about what happened. He said it is most often used to protect the constitutional rights of those who are accused.
“Its purpose is not to keep an investigation under secrecy forever,” he said.
But in the investigation into BYU police, it’s not clear why the records would remain under seal.

When will Utahns get to know these answers? Possibly never.
Since authorities began investigating BYU police in 2016, the state Department of
Public Safety and the Utah attorney general’s office have remained tight-lipped, and
have blocked The Salt Lake Tribune’s records requests seeking that information.
Officials publicly acknowledged for the first time this week their reason why: A Utah
judge issued a secrecy order in the investigation nearly three years ago at the request
of prosecutors — an order that remains in place to this day.
What judge is keeping the investigation behind closed doors?
That, too, is a secret.
“This cannot stand,” said Tribune Editor Jennifer Napier-Pearce. “This investigation
was conducted by the state of Utah and should be available to the public.”
She said the newspaper is exploring its options, including possible legal action, to get
access to records it has been fighting for since 2016.
“While we’re happy to finally know why they haven’t turned over their findings to us,”
she said, “we’re very concerned to learn that a secrecy order is in place.”
The Tribune on Wednesday received a response to a records request in which the
attorney general’s office explained why it can’t release information on the completed
investigation.
“Beginning in July 2016, secrecy orders have been entered at the request of the state
of Utah,” the denial reads. “These secrecy orders entered at the request of the state of
Utah remain in place.”
The Tribune asked BYU for comment and a spokeswoman said all they could do is
A report released last week gave a hint at the scope of the investigation — that state
authorities believe Rhoades accessed private police reports from Orem police, the
Utah County Sheriff’s Office and Provo police over a two-year period. He took
information from those reports and shared them with BYU’s Dean of Students Office,
the Title IX office and the Honor Code Office.
State prosecutors could not speak about the court action, citing the secrecy order. But
Criminal Deputy Craig Barlow, with the attorney general’s office, explained the
process generally, saying a prosecutor’s request for secrecy is not all that unusual. He
estimated that investigators make dozens of these secrecy requests every year —
usually to not alert a potential suspect to the police’s efforts.
Secrecy orders are also often used in financial crimes, Barlow explained, where
investigators may want a bank to hand over records without telling a suspect. They
are also frequently used in investigating drug-trafficking operations.
There are no expiration dates on these orders.
This means some investigations could remain under seal indefinitely, though Barlow
said investigations are most often made public if prosecutors decide to file charges.
The law “is almost silent about what happens when you get to the end,” Barlow said.
“There really is no guidance about how to go about an exit strategy.”

Greg Ferbrache — a former prosecutor with the attorney general’s office who is now in private practice — said the secrecy orders are not intended to keep the public from knowing about what happened. He said it is most often used to protect the constitutional rights of those who are accused.
“Its purpose is not to keep an investigation under secrecy forever,” he said.
But in the investigation into BYU police, it’s not clear why the records would remain
under seal.

There is no pending investigation, and the attorney general’s office announced in
October that prosecutors had decided months earlier to not file criminal charges
against Rhoades. A panel of prosecutors had decided the case against him “lacks a
reasonable likelihood of conviction,” the office said.
The Tribune obtained BYU documents in 2016 that showed Rhoades accessed a
countywide database to collect information from another police department for an
Honor Code investigation of an alleged sexual assault victim.
The documents show an Honor Code investigator contacted Rhoades in 2015 asking
him for information in the rape case. The lieutenant looked at the records that same
day, and relayed intimate details back to the investigator.
The Honor Code at BYU — which is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints — is a set of administrative rules that forbids alcohol and coffee, restricts
contact between male and female students, imposes a strict dress code, and bans
expressions of romantic affection between people of the same gender.
Rhoades retired from the BYU police department last fall, according to his attorney,
and later gave up his police certification after the state’s Peace Officer Standards and
Training (POST) began its own investigation. He had been a police officer in Utah for
34 years, according to POST records.
The criminal investigation is at the heart of why BYU may lost its police force entirely,
after it was announced last week that state officials are seeking a historic
decertification.
In a letter to BYU, state officials say they want the university to lose its policing
powers because the department did not conduct an internal investigation into
allegations of misconduct by a specific BYU police officer during a two-year period
ending in April 2018. The letter doesn’t name the officer or the specific misconduct
allegations, but the timeframe covers the same period DPS was investigating
Rhoades.
DPS officials also say that BYU police failed to respond to a subpoena that was issued
as state regulators were investigating an officer for misconduct. A December letter to
BYU police instructed the agency to allow DPS access to all “records, personnel and
electronic data” so investigators could assess how its officers use a police records
database, the command structure at BYUPD and “the powers, authority and
limitations” of BYU police officers.
BYU has said it plans to appeal the state’s decision to decertify its police force, which
would take effect Sept. 1.
An issue also at play is the ongoing debate about whether BYU police should be
subject to Utah’s record laws like every other police department in the state. The
Tribune has sued to force BYU police to abide by the Utah Government Records
Access and Management Act, or GRAMA. The newspaper received a favorable ruling
from a state district judge, but BYU has appealed to the Utah Supreme Court. A
hearing has not been scheduled.
Attorneys for the campus argue in court papers that as a private institution, BYU
should not be subject to records laws meant for government agencies.
But BYU officials have supported legislation that would require its police
departments to be subject to open records laws. That bill, if passed, would not be
retroactive and wouldn’t necessarily settle the ongoing litigation.

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Commentary: Justice for the Jane Does — and other rape victims — is our goal

Originally published at Salt Lake Tribune Online 

October 23, 2018

By Paul Cassell, Greg Ferbrache, and Bethany Warr

Last week, the three of us – joined by three other attorneys located both inside and outside Utah – filed a petition in the Utah Supreme Court on behalf of four “Jane Does.” The Jane Does had all been sexually assaulted, promptly reported their cases to law enforcement, and ultimately seen their cases declined by the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office for prosecution. Our petition to the Supreme Court asked for the appointment of prosecutor to pursue these well-founded criminal cases to their logical conclusion.

Last Friday, Robert Gehrke wrote an op-ed piece (“There’s no escaping the politics hanging over the allegations that Gill neglected sexual assault cases”) in which he supported the Jane Does. Gehrke concluded that, “The women deserve to be heard. Period.” But Gehrke also wondered about the timing of our petition, filed with a local election a few weeks away.

The Jane Does’ petition to raise a broad national issue: How should our nation’s criminal justice system respond when sexual assault victims come forward and present viable cases for prosecution that prosecutors ultimately decline? The idea for the petition first crystalized for the three of us on June 18, when (following a rape case hearing) we all discussed the fact that non-prosecution of sexual assault cases was one of the biggest challenges facing crime victims in Utah today.

On that day, we began working on a novel state constitutional theory challenging non-prosecution decisions. Over the next several months, on behalf of our four victims, we were proud to see the legal and factual arguments come together, based on pro bono efforts of more than six attorneys and four expert witnesses on such complex topics as low filing rates of rape cases in Salt Lake County, “rape myths,” and “institutional betrayal” of victims.

Ultimately, we completed a first draft of the petition on Sept. 26. After additional police materials became available, we filed the 150-page petition and 300-page supporting appendix with the Utah Supreme Court on Oct. 16.

Our petition is supported by local and national anti-sexual violence organizations and fits into a broader national pattern of litigation surrounding under-enforcement of the laws prohibiting sexual violence against women and girls. In just the last year or so, sexual assault victims have filed private civil lawsuits in San Francisco, Austin, and elsewhere. Those lawsuits have proceeded under federal civil rights theories – and have been (thus far) unsuccessful because of barriers existing in federal law. The Jane Does’ petition raises the same under-enforcement facts as these other lawsuits but relies on a new legal theory: that Utah state constitutional law allows appointment of a prosecutor to bring justice to victims.

Our petition was filed to look forward to the Utah Supreme Court achieving justice for sexual assault victims through appointment of a prosecutor. It was not filed against the Salt Lake District Attorney’s Office with an intent to look backwards at its non-charging decision. We simply handled our legal work in the ordinary course of affairs, filing the petition when it was ready to file. In doing so, we had our clients’ interests foremost in our minds.

The Jane Does wanted their voices heard and their petition filed immediately when it was ready, as they remained understandably anxious about what the next steps would be. We did not want to be accused of altering our filing’s timing — one way or the other — for political reasons.

Under-prosecution of sexual assault cases has been documented not just in statistics from Salt Lake County, but in Los Angeles, Baltimore, St. Louis, New York, Philadelphia, and Missoula, Mont., (among others), which is why our petition has received national attention. How our nation will respond to under-prosecution remains to be determined. The Jane Does’ petition deserves a serious discussion that is long overdue.

 

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Four women seek special prosecutor after DA declines to file sexual assault charges

Originally published at American Bar Association

BY DEBRA CASSENS WEISS

POSTED 

Four women are asking the Utah Supreme Court to appoint a special prosecutor to pursue their sexual assault allegations after the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office declined to bring charges.

The women are basing their request on a state constitutional provision that authorizes the appointment of a special prosecutor when a county attorney fails to prosecute “according to law,” the Salt Lake Tribune reports.

“The plight of these victims is hardly unique,” their Oct. 16 petition says. “In this country today, an intense debate is raging about how women who have been raped or sexually assaulted can make themselves believed by a criminal justice system that all too often seems ready to ignore their pleas.”

One woman said she was 17 years old when she was assaulted by a classmate while at his home to work on a school project, the petition says. She has a form of muscular dystrophy that affects her strength and balance, and she relies on a German shepherd to walk.

The woman says she allowed the classmate to kiss her, but then he became aggressive and raped her. She says she became scared and froze during the assault, and her physical limitations made her unable to resist. The prosecutor who evaluated the case said in a letter that he and four other prosecutors didn’t think they could prove a rape case because she “failed to say or physically manifest any lack of consent.”

A second woman who had cerebral policy said she met her attacker, a convicted rapist, on the way to a medical appointment. She says the man sexually assaulted her multiple times at his home on two occasions. The first time she accompanied him to his home, and when he began making demands she felt she had to comply. The second time, she says, she went to his home because he threatened her. The man’s DNA was found in the woman’s vagina, but prosecutors said there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute.

A third woman says she was assaulted by her massage therapist. A fourth says she was 24 years old when she was raped by “a prominent law enforcement officer” when she was volunteering with a citizens advisory board. The Salt Lake Tribune identifies the man as a former police chief who was forced out of a police department in Maryland after a sexual assault allegation. She was among five women who obtained a settlement based on sexual assault allegations against the man when he worked in Utah.

The women are represented by several lawyers, including University of Utah law professor Paul Cassell, a former federal judge.

Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill defended the decisions not to file charges in an interview with the Salt Lake Tribune. He said his office has filed charges in about 39.5 to 45.5 percent of the sexual assault cases presented to his office over the past two years, about the same as state and federal averages.

His office has an ethical obligation not to prosecute when the evidence is insufficient, Gill said.

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