The Utah County Sheriff’s Office said Thursday that the department was “shocked” by a judge’s rare decision a week ago to permanently dismiss criminal charges against a central suspect in the agency’s investigation into decades-old allegations of satanic ritual abuse.
Fourth District Judge Roger Griffin last week dismissed six felony sex abuse counts against former therapist David Hamblin, charges that stemmed from allegations that Hamblin had abused a girl who lived in his neighborhood in the 1980s. The judge tossed the case after finding that police and prosecutors withheld key evidence that could have helped Hamblin’s defense. And he dismissed it with prejudice, meaning that prosecutors can’t refile the charges in the future.
In a lengthy statement released on Thursday, the sheriff’s office defended its investigators and said they gave all the evidence in the case to prosecutors back when Hamblin was first charged in 2022.
Since he was charged, Hamblin’s defense team has questioned whether they had been given all that they were supposed to receive, and expressed concern about some of the correspondence between the alleged victim and the investigators.
The sheriff’s office said it anticipated that investigators would have had the chance to explain themselves in a court hearing and challenge the allegation that they were improperly withholding evidence, but that never happened. The office said that the judge relied on one side’s account and agreed with what the defense alleged without holding an evidentiary hearing to find out the facts.
“This complete lack of due process resulting in the dismissal of heinous charges of sex abuse of a child based on an incomplete evidentiary picture is extremely concerning,” the department’s statement reads. “...The fact that the court dismissed with prejudice these charges against David Hamblin without one word of testimony from the victim or the investigators is abhorrent.”
Griffin dismissed the case at the request of Nathan Evershed, a special prosecutor that the Utah attorney general’s office had hired to handle the case. Evershed told the judge that he was seeking a dismissal because, in addition to the evidence issues, he reviewed the case and determined there was not a “reasonable likelihood” he could secure a conviction.
But Evershed had asked for the case to be dismissed without prejudice, a more typical decision that means prosecutors can refile a case if something changes.
Griffin didn’t do that. He noted in his 34-page ruling that it’s “rarely appropriate” for a judge to dismiss a case and not allow the chance for prosecutors to try again. But he said it was merited here because it wouldn’t be possible for Hamblin to get a fair trial given the evidence issues.
Defense attorney Leah Aston said in response to the judge’s ruling: “Mr. Hamblin appreciates the judge’s thoughtful, detailed, and thorough ruling, which unmasks and recognizes serious missteps in this case over several years.”
Here are the main issues in Griffin’s ruling that the Utah County Sheriff’s Office disputes.
Withheld evidence
The withheld evidence at the center of the case’s dismissal was a police report that Utah County Sheriff’s Office investigators had created after interviewing the alleged victim in September 2022.
According to court papers filed by Hamblin’s defense attorneys, the alleged victim in that interview “recounts in great detail” sex crimes that took place under the guise of a “satanic ritual” at a room in an area church. This document was not turned over to Hamblin’s attorneys until the case had been pending for more than two years, and after Evershed was hired by the attorney general’s office to take over the case.
The sheriff’s office said in its statement that investigators did provide this specific report to prosecutors in September 2022. (At that time, Juab County Attorney Ryan Peters was the prosecutor on the case; he has since been appointed as a judge. The Juab County Attorney’s Office did not respond to a request for comment on last week’s ruling.)
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‘Slow-walking’ evidence
Griffin recounted in his ruling an allegation from the defense that investigators had tried to “slow walk” evidence to Hamblin’s attorneys in order to gain a strategic advantage. The defense pointed to a recording in which a Utah County Sheriff’s investigator can be heard telling one witness that they were hoping to withhold certain evidence until after the case had progressed further.
“It is exculpatory, they have a right to look at it, they have a right to verify it,” the investigator says in the recording, according to court records. “We were just hoping we could get at least through a preliminary hearing before that happened.”
The sheriff’s office said this statement “was taken wholly out of context” and had nothing to do with evidence.
“Rather, investigators were expressing disappointment only that certain evidence had been made available to the public,” the statement reads.
Ritual sex abuse statements
It’s not clear why the police report had not been handed over to the defense until this year. But Hamblin’s defense attorneys noted in a court filing that the report, in which the alleged victim details a satanic ritual as part of the alleged abuse, counters statements made by previous prosecutors on the case. Prosecutors had asserted that Hamblin’s alleged crimes were “not in the context of a satanic child abuse cult” but instead took place “in his own homes with perhaps only family members present.”
There was also some question, Griffin wrote in his ruling, about whether these allegations relied on “recovered memories” from therapy sessions — a controversial form of psychotherapy, according to the American Psychological Association.
The sheriff’s office said that if an evidentiary hearing had been held, the alleged victim could have given more context about the statements that caused the judge’s concerns.
“Again, neither the investigators nor the victim was ever given the opportunity to explain themselves or address the defense allegations,” the sheriff’s office said.
What’s next
Hamblin still faces six child sex abuse charges in a separate case filed in Manti, where prosecutors allege he abused a young patient in therapy sessions.
His ex-wife, Roselle Stevenson, has also been charged in connection with the allegations from their former neighbor. Her attorneys have also filed a motion to dismiss, referencing the evidentiary issues in Hamblin’s dismissed case.
They are the only two suspects who have been charged thus far in connection with the sheriff’s office’s ritual abuse investigation, which it publicly announced in 2022.
The office didn’t address in its statement whether that investigation continues. It said it was committed to investigating sexual assault and “all crimes against children whether they occurred recently or years ago.”
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