Defense attorneys for Chad Daybell have filed three motions aimed at removing the death penalty for their client and at limiting how the state can argue their case.
Attorney John Prior has asked for hearings on his motions to exclude the death penalty and to require prosecutors to use the exact same arguments about his clients culpability in the deaths of JJ Vallow, 7; Tylee Ryan, 16; and Tammy Daybell that they used in his wife’s trial.
Daybell and his wife, Lori Vallow Daybell, were charged with murder and conspiracy in the deaths of two of Vallow Daybell’s children and Daybell’s first wife. They were initially charged together, but Judge Steven Boyce severed their cases after Daybell waived his right to a speedy trial while his wife did not.
Vallow Daybell’s trial was delayed anyway because she was twice declared incompetent to stand trial and sent to a state mental health facility for treatment. Two weeks before her trial finally started earlier this year, Judge Steven Boyce took the death penalty off the table because, he said, the rapidly approaching trial date meant that attorneys did not have the time to look over additional material involved in a death penalty case.
Vallow Daybell was convicted on all charges and sentenced to life without parole.
Argument that Daybell has ‘lesser culpability’
Prior covers all the bases in his three motions. In one, he argues that prosecutors made clear in Vallow Daybell’s trial that she was the driver of the conspiracy, giving Daybell “lesser culpability than his co-defendant,” as CrimeOnline previously reported.
Motion to Strike the Death Penalty Based Upon Relative Culpability by kc wildmoon on Scribd
“Per the state’s own presentation of evidence and arguments in the trial of Lori Vallow, Mr. Daybell has lesser culpability than his co-defendant, who did not face the death penalty,” Prior argued.
But even if both Lori and Chad were equally to blame, Prior wrote. it would still be “unconstitutional and unacceptable” for Vallow Daybell to get life in prison and Daybell to be sentenced to death.
“While the State’s prosecution of Ms. Vallow has established that — even if all of the state’s allegations were accepted as true — Mr. Daybell was not more culpable in the alleged conspiracy than Ms. Vallow, he is the co-defendant facing the most extreme punishment available,” the motion reads. “The state’s seeking of Mr. Daybell’s death is cruel and unusual.”
Argument to force prosecutors to admit Vallow Daybell was ‘driving force’ in conspiracy
Another of Prior’s motions seeks to force the state to present the same case for Daybell that it did for his wife, that is, to force prosecutors to admit that Vallow Daybell was in charge of the conspiracy and her husband was merely taking orders. the “core” of the prosecution case, he said, “was that she was the driving force behind the alleged conspiracy … that she used both Alex Cox [her brother] and Chad Daybell through emotional and sexual manipulation and that she remained in charge of the plan throughout.”
Motion in Limine to Limit State to Consistent Arguments on Defendants Relative Culpability by kc wildmoon on Scribd
It would be “inconsistent,” Prior wrote, “to argue in Mr. Daybell’s trial that he was the person that planned or set in motion a conspiracy leading to these deaths.”
“It would likewise be inconsistent to argue for the State to argue that Chad’s alleged actions were taken of his own accord, free from manipulation and coercion,” he wrote.
The State should “be limited to arguing that Chad followed Lori’s leads throughout the alleged conspiracy that Lori herself set in motion,” Prior said, adding that was true “especially in a co-defendant case where only one defendant faces the possibility of the death penalty.”
Argument that it’s just not fair for Daybell to face death penalty when his wife did not
The third motion argues that it is “arbitrary, capricious, & disproportate” to keep the death penalty on the table “in light of striking death in co-defendant’s case.”
Motion to Strike Death Penalty as Arbitrary Capricious Disproportionate by kc wildmoon on Scribd
“Willington to waive speedy trial rihts cannot constitutionally be the deciding factor in who lives and who dies,” the motion reads.
Prosecutors have not yet responded to any of the motions.
Vallow Daybell is now waiting extradition to Arizona to stand trial on a conspiracy to murder charge in the death of her fourth husband, Charles Vallow, who was shot to death by her brother just weeks before her children disappeared, Tammy Daybell mysteriously died, and she married Chad Daybell.
Alex Cox died, reportedly of natural causes, a few months after Charles Vallow’s death. The children were later found buried on Chad Daybell’s property.
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[Feature Photo: Chad Daybell/Rexburg PD]
