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Charges Against Former Escalante Police Chief Dismissed by Utah Attorney General’s Office


ESCALANTE – After three and a half years following the filing of charges against Escalante’s former police chief, Kevin Worlton, for allegedly making false or inconsistent material statements, the case against Mr. Worlton has been dismissed.
The Utah Attorney General’s office filed a motion to dismiss before Utah Sixth District Judge Wallace Lee on September 11, 2018.

Mr. Worlton had been charged on March 16, 2015 for events occurring on December 16, 2014 during the course of making arrests of individuals in Escalante for drug possession or distribution.

The March 2015 charges against Worlton included two counts of making false or in­consistent material statements—each a second degree felony, and a third count of offi­cial neglect and misconduct, a class B misdemeanor.

The misdemeanor count had already been thrown out by a court during a preliminary hearing, according to Jeremy Jones, with Nelson Jones, PLLC law firm in Sandy, who is among the team of attorneys representing Mr. Worlton.

Mr. Jones said that it wasn’t surprising under the circumstances that the state dismissed the additional two charges, but that the timing was unexpected. The case had been scheduled for a jury trial in February 2019.

“The timing is surprising,” said Jones. “They had represented that they were going to take us to trial. It was somewhat abrupt in that we had filed a motion citing problems with their case, and they defended them.”

Jones added that, “The case was alive but on life support.”

“This public corruption unit has a terrible track record,” said Jones “We have major questions about this outlet and why they are bringing these cases. The track record on these prosecutions is troubling to say the least and we wish they would spend their energies elsewhere.”

Jones said a major problem with the case was that the office paraphrased what they thought Worlton had said, and then used that characterization to say that he had lied. He added that there were fundamental legal questions as to whether he could be charged with some of these counts, because there was never a signature or evidence that he had signed certain documents that were material to the charges.

“Basically, they were accusing him of the thing that it appears they were doing themselves. There is a lot of irony in this case,” said Jones.

Jones said that while they were pleased the case was dismissed, there are nevertheless concerns about the apparent reasons why the case has been dropped, which is to limit governmental liability in the event that the defendant is acquitted.

“When they realize this person will not ‘roll over’ they drop the case,” said Jones. “It is wrongful and improper for a prosecutor to dismiss a case like this to avoid liability.”

“Obviously, we think it’s unfortunate that he was ever prosecuted in the first instance,” said Jones. “We want to get Kevin’s name cleared, and there are some options for doing that and we are exploring those because we want the people of Escalante to understand what happened. It is important for people to know this case was dropped and there are good reasons for that.”

—Insider

 

 

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