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Ogden • After spending more than six hours deliberating Douglas Anderson Lovell's fate Tuesday, a 12-member jury has not yet decided whether the man will face execution for killing a woman in 1985 to prevent her from testifying against him in a rape case.

Jurors returned just after 9 p.m. on Tuesday and said they would like to continue their deliberations into the next day. They were expected to return 9 a.m. Wednesday morning to continue to debate whether Lovell will face the death penalty or be given life in prison with the possibility of parole.

Hours earlier, Deputy Weber County Attorney Christopher Shaw told jurors that Lovell deserved the death penalty for kidnapping and murdering Joyce Yost in August 1985.

"Make no mistake about it, the state is going to ask you for a verdict of death," Shaw told jurors Tuesday during his closing argument. "The aggravated circumstances vastly outweigh the mitigating circumstances beyond a reasonable doubt, and a verdict of death is just and appropriate."

Shaw told jurors that Lovell showed "utter and complete disregard" for the 39-year-old woman's life.

"There can be no closure when your loved one is brutally and savagely taken from you forever," Shaw said. "There is no closure. What there can be is a just and appropriate penalty."

Shaw argued that there was little to no mitigating evidence to justify saving Lovell from death, saying that Lovell led a life of crime even before he kidnapped and raped Yost in April 1985 and, months later, kidnapped her again and killed her in the mountains east of Ogden.

"This defendant has committed all the aggravated felonies the state of Utah has to offer," Shaw said. "That's the kind of person you are dealing with here. The worst of the worst is seated in our midst."

Two weeks ago, the jurors found Lovell, now 57, guilty of aggravated murder for Yost's death. They must now decide whether he will be executed for his crime.

During his closing argument, defense attorney Michael Bouwhuis argued for a life sentence with the possibility of parole, rather than execution, telling the jury that the evidence presented for the past week was not intended to be a defense to murder.

"The state is right; it was a horrendous crime," Bouwhuis told jurors. "There's no excuse for it. That's why we didn't present a defense" at trial, he said.

Bouwhuis said risk factors — such as the divorce of Lovell's parents and his mother's mental health issues — don't cause someone to murder, "but they have an impact."

Earlier in the trial, a defense expert testified that Lovell's childhood — during which his mother was depressed and mentally ill and his father was often absent — likely had an effect on the adult he became. The expert also said Lovell was greatly affected by his parents' divorce in his early teens and his brother's drug overdose death when Lovell was 18.

"There's no sugarcoating what he did," Bouwhuis said. "Nothing that I talk about here, none of this mitigating evidence is meant to minimize the impact on Joyce Yost and on her family. You can't make up for taking someone's life. Because you can't bring it back."

Both Bouwhuis and Shaw spent portions of their arguments focusing on the fact that Yost's body never has been found.

Lovell — who told police he left her body near Snowbasin ski resort — had struck a plea deal with prosecutors in 1993 in which they agreed not to seek his execution if Lovell could lead authorities to Yost's remains.

The body was never found, despite an extensive search of the area by police that year.

The defense team brought in an expert who testified about the possibility that animals may have moved or destroyed the remains, but Shaw argued that Lovell took police to the wrong place.

"Maybe he doesn't want the forensic experts to find out exactly what he did to Joyce Yost," Shaw said.

Bouwhuis insisted Tuesday that Lovell had the "greatest incentive" to lead police to the body.

"The fact of the matter is, Doug Lovell didn't want to die," Bouwhuis told the jury. "Clearly, he still doesn't want to die. But can you blame a person for not wanting to die regardless of what he did?"

After the fruitless 1993 search, an Ogden judge sentenced Lovell to death by lethal injection. But in 2011, the Utah Supreme Court ruled he could withdraw his guilty plea because he should have been better informed of his rights during court proceedings.

Bouwhuis pointed out that for the 12 jurors — nine men and three women — to impose death, it must be unanimous.

"One vote here for a life sentence means Doug gets a life sentence," he said. "The outcome of this proceeding is as serious as it gets."

Yost was considered a missing person for six years until Lovell's ex-wife, Rhonda Buttars, confessed to police what she knew of Yost's death. She agreed to wear a police recording device and captured Lovell confessing to the crime in 1991. Aggravated murder charges were filed against him the following year.

Despite Lovell's efforts to prevent Yost from testifying against him in the rape case, he was nevertheless convicted by a jury of aggravated kidnapping and aggravated sexual assault in December 1985, with the help of a transcript from Yost's preliminary hearing testimony. Lovell has since been serving a 15-years-to-life term at the Utah State Prison.

Lovell's is the first death penalty case to go to trial in Utah since 2008, when Floyd Eugene Maestas, now 59, was sentenced to die for stomping 72-year-old Donna Lou Bott to death during a 2004 break-in and robbery at her Salt Lake City home.

Twitter: @jm_miller