Opinion ID: 2826050
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: introduction

Text: ¶1 We are asked to review a magistrate‘s decision, at the preliminary hearing stage, to dismiss charges of rape and child sexual abuse. Under Utah‘s liberal bindover standard, a magistrate must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution. This means that when reasonable inferences from the evidence cut both for and against the state‘s case, the magistrate STATE v. SCHMIDT Opinion of the Court lacks discretion to choose between them and must leave such a determination to the fact-finder at trial. But a magistrate may disregard any testimony that is so inconsistent and so incredible that it is incapable of supporting a reasonable belief that the defendant committed the charged offenses. Here, the magistrate disregarded a young woman‘s testimony that she had been abused daily over a four-year period. The magistrate did so for three reasons: (1) inconsistent testimony regarding the letter that precipitated the sexual abuse, (2) the young woman‘s prior denials to her mother and investigators that there was any sexual abuse, and (3) the fact that no one had seen her engage in sexual activity with the Defendant even though she claimed to have had sex repeatedly in the common areas of the home. ¶2 We conclude that the magistrate exceeded her discretion. Although inconsistencies in the young woman‘s testimony and her prior denials may indicate she is being untruthful, there are plausible alternative explanations that support her allegations. And there is also testimony from two of her family members that corroborates her account of when and where some of the sexual abuse occurred. Because there is at least a reasonable inference from the evidence that the victim was telling the truth, the magistrate lacked discretion to disregard her testimony. And because her testimony described daily sexual abuse over a four-year period, the magistrate exceeded her discretion in refusing to bind the Defendant over for trial. ¶3 In reversing the magistrate‘s decision, we also take the opportunity to clarify statements in two recent cases—State v. Ramirez and State v. Maughan—that could be read as slight departures from the liberal bindover standard we have applied for more than a decade. In 2001, we held in State v. Clark that a magistrate must bind a defendant over for trial if the state presents enough evidence to support a reasonable belief that the defendant committed the crime charged—a threshold equivalent to the probable cause standard the state must meet to secure an arrest warrant. But prior to 2001, some of our decisions imposed a higher standard in preliminary hearings, requiring the state to put on evidence ―from which the trier of fact could conclude the defendant was guilty of the offense as charged.‖1 Although there is language in Maughan and Ramirez that has echoes of the more stringent standard we repudiated in 2001, both of those decisions reaffirmed the 1State v. Anderson, 612 P.2d 778, 783 (Utah 1980) (emphasis added), overruled by State v. Clark, 2001 UT 9, ¶ 16, 20 P.3d 300. 2 Cite as: 2015 UT 65 Opinion of the Court probable cause standard we adopted in State v. Clark. Accordingly, neither case should be read as modifying the probable cause standard magistrates currently apply at preliminary hearings.