FULL SENTENCING: Lori Vallow Daybell to serve life in prison for murdering her 2 kids

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Ms. Vallow, based on the jury's verdict of guilty in this case, it is the judgment of this court that you're guilty of the following counts of the amended indictment. Count one, conspiracy to commit first degree murder of Tylee Ryan and grand theft by deception. Count two, first degree murder of Tylee Ryan. Count three, conspiracy to commit first degree murder of Joshua Jackson, Vallow and grand theft by deception. Count four, first degree murder of Joshua Jackson, Vallow. Count five, conspiracy to commit first degree murder of Tamara Tammy Daybell. Count seven, grand theft. I carefully reviewed the record of this case, beginning with your prior criminal history. Very notably, you're 50 years old. These are the first criminal convictions you've ever had. I will note, however, in addition to these convictions, you have two additional conspiracy to commit first degree murder cases pending in Arizona. And it's somewhat incredible in this case that seeing you've gone from no criminal history in your life to now having been convicted of two counts of first degree murder, three counts of conspiracy to commit first degree murder, and you continue to face more additional counts of conspiracy to commit first degree murder in another state. I've looked at the recommendations in the pre-sentence investigation report. It ultimately recommends a prison sentence stating quote incarceration under the custody of the Idaho Board of Correction. Normally, the court would have some additional information to rely on in fashioning its sentence, including the benefit of recommendations based on a gain evaluation, substance abuse report, mental health review, and other reports. However, you elected not to cooperate with the pre-sentence investigation. As I would note on page 23 of the pre-sentence investigation report, it states quote, Lori Vallow Daybell intends to remain silent during the pre-sentence investigation process. She has the packet but does not intend to answer any questions of evaluators or investigators. No attempts were made to complete the court-ordered screenings due to her refusal. I'm advising you that that was your choice to not cooperate in the pre-sentence investigation, but it left me without some additional information that potentially could have been mitigating in your case. And as I proceed with the sentencing, I'll note those deficiencies in the information I normally would have in a pre-sentence investigation report. As has been mentioned by both sides here, the court has to consider certain sentencing objectives when I sentence somebody. And these are set out in cases, including State v. 2 Hill, which is a Court of Appeals case, 103 Idaho 565, and it's been adopted by our Supreme Court as well. And I have to consider four main objectives. Number one, the protection of society, which is the primary objective, which is the primary objective. Two, deterrence of the individual and public generally. Three, possibility of rehabilitation. And four, punishment or retribution for wrongdoing. That states or case states moreover, it's clear as a matter of policy in Idaho, the primary consideration is the good order and protection of society. All other factors must be subservient to that end. I've also reviewed and considered the criteria set forth in an Idaho statute 19-25-21 on the question of whether or not you should be confined to prison and to what extent. That statute sets out a variety of factors I have to consider in weighing whether a long prison term here would be appropriate. Some of the attorneys cited already to some of the provisions of that statute. And again, it talks about the primary consideration of the protection of society and also talks about the impact on the victim. The possibility of risk reduction through rehabilitation and deterrence are also to be considered. There are some factors laid out in that statute that are not necessarily controlling, but way in favor against either imprisonment or in this case where imprisonment's required an extensive imprisonment term. Some of those factors under part two of this statute is the defendant's criminal conduct neither cause nor threaten harm, which is clearly not the case here. That the defendant did not contemplate the conduct would cause or threaten harm. Again, that would not apply here. The defendant's criminogenic needs indicate the defendant will benefit from supervision and treatment in the community. That's unavailable as community treatment can't occur with a minimum prison sentence required here. Another factor, were there substantial grounds tending to excuse or justify the defendant's criminal conduct, though failing to establish a defense? I don't find those apply given the facts of this case. Other factors, the victim of the defendant's criminal conduct induced or facilitated the commission of the crime. That did not occur here. Another part talks about compensation, which I don't find would be appropriate here other than on the grand theft charge. Part G, the defendant has no history of prior delinquency or criminal activity or has led a law-abiding life for a substantial period of time before the commission of the present crime. That is the single most mitigating factor I see in this case. Again, it's unbelievable that at your age you have no prior criminal history and now you sit here convicted of the most serious charges. I also have to consider whether the criminal conduct was the result of circumstances unlikely to recur. Based on the evidence in this case and in particular, considering the statement you just made to the court, I find it weighs against me finding and renegation for that factor. And then finally, the character and attitudes of the defendant indicate the commission of another crime is unlikely or the defendant demonstrates amenability to treatment. So those are the mitigating factors. Then in aggravation, we have more factors to consider. Is there an undue risk that during the period of a suspended sentence or probation, the defendant would commit another crime harmful to another person? Would a lesser sentence depreciate the seriousness of the defendant's crime? Will imprisonment provide appropriate punishment and deterrent to the defendant? Will imprisonment provide an appropriate deterrent for other persons in the community? And a factor that would not apply here is the defendant a multiple offender or professional criminal. I don't have an LSI score, which is one value I can look at to help determine whether or not you'd be likely to reoffend. I don't have that because you wouldn't cooperate with the report. So considering here that you've lived a law-abiding life and for a long time, you were obviously a good mother, sister, daughter and friend to many people. I have to take that into account. You've served a very long time of local jail over 1200 days. And the report is you've been a great inmate, never caused a problem for anyone in the jail. And you should be commended for that. And that also shows that you are capable of that. I believe your counsel, when they tell me you're an intelligent person, up until all these events began to transpire, you've achieved goals in your life. You've done important things in your life. And I'd note that despite some of the comments here today, I have found that during my interactions with you throughout this long case, including your trial, you've been respectful of the court. do we know what this beeping is that keeps going off? Sorry. All right. The court will next consider, and I think it must be considered in mitigation that you do have mental health issues. I've dealt with those throughout the context of this case, where there were commitment proceedings. I've reviewed those reports and have that personal information from having gone through the determinations of whether or not you were competent or fit to stand trial. The most current diagnosis the court has is from Dr. Watson from February of this year. So obviously a very complex diagnosis that's been made here, whether or not that can, or how it would be treated. I think by all accounts is unknown at this time. I've reviewed your personal history, including statements from your own immediate family members, and it's clear that something radically changed in you that led you to where you are today. In a statement made in the pre-sentence investigation report, your mother stated it perhaps best and said that you are not now, quote, the person she knew. The record in this case, including all the evidence I observed during the jury trial, indicates that if it wasn't already occurring that this relationship with the co-defendant seemed to be a catalyst for the change. At this point, I'll note that I will not be making comments on any other co-defendants in this case, as your co-defendant is currently presumed innocent and awaiting trial. In some, there are significant mitigating factors the court has to consider here when I consider you and your life as a whole, and that does make the case difficult. Typically, when I see somebody to be sentenced and they don't have a prior criminal history, they're given opportunities to first prove themselves on probation. Or avoid a lengthy term of incarceration. However, of course, some crimes are so serious that even with mitigation, there is no other reasonable option, except for a prison term and a long prison term. And sadly, you've been convicted of and have committed the most serious crimes possible. And those crimes also require an equally serious punishment. So this is the part where I will consider what I think are the factors in aggravation. I went through those factors in the statute that I look at, and as I'll explain, I find that five of those factors weigh against you and in favor of a lengthy period of imprisonment. First, the case itself, I'll discuss that there was a lot of pre-trial litigation in the case. You decided to take your case to a jury trial. I will state and emphasize that I firmly believe it's the right of every person in our country to exercise their right to a jury trial. And they're afforded the full due process of the law. It's been somewhat disheartening to me to realize that there are many people who think that they can pre-determine a case and somebody shouldn't be afforded their full rights of due process before they are convicted of a crime. Well, I didn't make all of the rules that govern criminal cases, but I took an oath to uphold the rules that are there, and I make every effort to ensure that people's due process is protected because that's an important duty of mine. Everyone has a right to be presumed innocent, and everyone in a criminal case does have a right to a jury trial. Sometimes I feel like maybe too many cases settle, and there should be more trials because it's a right people are entitled to exercise. You exercise that right, and I in no way hold it against you that you decided to have your case determined by a jury. That's your right, and it does not impact or influence my decision in sentencing. Before trial, I did not delve into all of the evidence or facts of this case and only address those when necessary to make rulings on motions because I wanted to keep objective through the proceedings and remain impartial. You were afforded all of your due process in this case, and ultimately, after presentation of the evidence, a jury did find you guilty on all counts. I bring that up now because when there is a trial, I learn and see all of the facts along with the jurors, and that's a different scenario than when someone enters a plea, and I'm only allowing argument in a sentencing and not sitting through the evidence as I did here. Having considered all of the evidence that I saw at trial, it's been a difficult task for me to narrow down and articulate all of the aggravating factors because really, there are so many here. Murder is the most serious offense. And the most unimaginable type of murder is to have a mother murdering her own children, and that's exactly what you did. You were involved in and guilty of conspiring to murder another group of children's mother, Tammy Daybell, who had children of her own. And despite the jury convicting you with overwhelming evidence, you still sit here before the court today and said you didn't do it. You came here to East Idaho, where I've spent my life, and moved here from another place already with plans in progress to make your children disappear. The evidence bore that out at trial, you removed your children from their home in Arizona, alienated them from friends and family, got rid of JJ's service dog. You moved to Rexpert, a community where you could find a thousand random families to take your children, and you brought them here to murder them. You had so many other options. You could have gotten divorced. You could have found someone to take care of those kids. But as the state was able to prove at trial, you chose the most evil and destructive path possible. You killed those children, according to the state's theory, and I believe it, to remove them as obstacles and to profit financially. You justified all of this by going down a bizarre religious rabbit hole, and clearly, you are still down there. While you were enjoying your new life in Hawaii, countless law enforcement officers, family members, and volunteers were searching for your children. And I don't think, to this day, you have any remorse for the effort and heartache you caused for others who looked for your children when you knew where they were and knew they were dead. They were found dead, burned, mutilated, and dismembered, and buried like animals. After you knew they were dead, you collected public-funded assistance payments meant for them, and that was blood money you kept for yourself. And that's the grand theft charge you've been convicted of. Your sister, your son, talked to you, begged with you while you were in the jail during phone calls I heard at trial. And those were very sad and difficult calls to hear. And you didn't provide any assistance or comfort to them. During the trial, when the evidence came out about how these children were found in the state they were in, you wanted to be excused and not have to watch the evidence, and were fined to let all the other people in the courtroom, including the jurors, have to bear through that. However, I ruled that you did have to sit and watch and see the result of your heinous crimes. The jurors in your case fulfilled their duty admirably. All 18 jurors we had, because we had alternates, went through the entire trial and faithfully fulfilled all their obligations and all the instructions, so we were able to get impartial jurors who weren't already tainted by pretrial publicity to decide your case. And I do thank the jurors publicly for the service they rendered. Those jurors, I noted during the trial, were very good at keeping their motions in check and keeping stone-faced as they're supposed to do and be objective until the case is done and submitted. However, I did note at certain times during the trial, such as when there were videos and pictures shown of you in Hawaii at this time frame when J.J. and Tylee were lying in shallow graves, the disgust on the faces of those jurors was evident, and shocking revelations about what happened here just kept coming through the trial. The crime scene was a horrific thing to have to review, and there's images that I will never get out of my mind, and I'm just looking at the pictures. Law enforcement officers who had to deal with the aftermath of what you did, I'm sure were traumatized, and I know it was traumatic as well for the jurors who had to sit through and see the photographs of these dead and mutilated and buried children. For those people who loved and cared about J.J. and Tylee and Tammy Daybell, to have to see those photographs of them through trial of their dead and desecrated bodies must have been devastating. Tammy Daybell was murdered as a result of your conspiracy. She was, by all accounts, a healthy, happy mother and wife through a lot of her life, and you were out shopping for wedding rings to marry her husband while she was still alive. You were planning a wedding to her husband while she was still alive. You haven't shown any remorse for any of those actions, and she ended up being murdered, buried, had to be disinterred later so an autopsy could be performed in order to prove the evidence of what you had done. She didn't deserve any of that. You took her life away. You destroyed that family, fractured it to the point where, in the information I've had through the PSI, there are relationships that will probably never be mended that have rippled as a result of what's happened. J.J. and Tylee, of course, seven years old, 16 years old, were separate people whose lives were cut way too short because of you, never got to grow up and be adults. The family and friends who have provided their impact statements, of course, have stated it better than I could about who they were, and it is a loss for everyone that you took them away from this world. And it is the most shocking thing, really, I can imagine, is that a mother killed her own children, and you simply have no remorse for it. Even sitting here today, there's no remorse for what you did. After all of this evidence through trial, you haven't shown any remorse. You haven't said you're sorry. You haven't done anything to seek leniency from this court. There's been a lot of people during trial and here who have explained the devastation you're responsible for, and you've forever altered the lives, not in a good way for many, many people, destroying family relationships, taking people away that were loved, cared for, and needed. You may not believe to this day that you've done anything wrong, and you still may think you're justified by your religious beliefs for what happened here. I'm not here to judge that, but I don't believe that any God in any religion would want to have have this happen, what happened here. And your crimes are heinous and egregious, and that alone can constitute a major aggravating factor that requires me to impose a serious length of incarceration. So after weighing all those factors, I need to an aggravation, and I find that the sentences I'm about to impose will serve the interest of justice by, number one, preventing you from ever doing this again, that they will not depreciate the seriousness of your crimes, will punish you appropriately, and will serve to deter both you and others. So that concludes the aggravating factors the court considered. At this time, then, I am prepared to pronounce sentence. Mr. Thomas, Mr. Archibald, and the defendant, would you please rise for the pronouncement of sentence? Based on all the relevant circumstances, including the evidence and recommendations presented in court today, it's the judgment of this court. Ms. Vallow, you'll be sentenced as follows. Well, first note, I'm going to take up the counts out of order as I want to address the substantive murder sentences first. So on count two, the charge you were convicted of, the first-degree murder of Tylee Ryan, you are sentenced to the custody of the State Board of Corrections to serve the maximum allowed sentence of fixed determinate term of life imprisonment with no possibility of parole. I'll next address the three conspiracy counts you've been convicted of and note under Idaho Code 18701, the punishment for those crimes is the same as the underlying offenses you combine to commit. One of the offenses you combine to commit was first-degree murder, so those may be punishable also by imprisonment for life. When I look at what the appropriate sentences should be for the conspiracy charges, at first I wondered if they should be as long of a term or serious as the substantive murder charges. however, what I've concluded is that these conspiracy convictions merit the same grave punishment for several reasons. First, the conspiracies in which you engaged in have had far-reaching impacts on many people besides the deceased victims. And with what the courts heard, I am convinced that the conspiracy charges also merit the same serious sentence. So on count one, the conspiracy to commit first-degree murder of Tylee Ryan and grand theft by deception, you're sentenced to the custody of the State Board of Corrections to serve the maximum allowed sentence to a fixed determinate term of life imprisonment with no possibility of parole. On count three, the conspiracy to commit first-degree murder of Tylee Ryan and grand theft by deception, you're sentenced to the custody of the State Board of Corrections to serve the maximum allowed sentence to a fixed determinate term of life imprisonment with no possibility of parole. Finally, the court will address count seven, which is the charge of grand theft. On that charge, the court is going to sentence you to a fixed determinate term of five years of prison followed by an indeterminate term of five years of prison for a total 10-year term of imprisonment on the grand theft. Court will next consider whether sentences should be imposed consecutively or concurrently. I generally don't, I'm a pragmatic person and I've struggled with the point of a consecutive sentence when in Idaho a life sentence is just that, a life sentence without parole and I've thought it through. However, when I looked at this case and the more I thought about it, I've determined that because there are three separate murders with three separate victims that occurred at three separate times, then running counts concurrently would not serve the interest of justice because those crimes all need to be taken into account separately and distinctly and individually and you need to be held accountable separately for each of the three murders. So on those counts, the court will run consecutively the count two murder of Tylee Ryan, consecutive to count four the murder of Joshua Jackson Vallow, and count five will run consecutive to count two and four the conspiracy to commit first degree murder of Tamara Tammy Daybell. So three consecutive life terms of prison. The remaining counts will be concurrent to the counts that are consecutive. The court will impose fines as requested by the state in the amount of $25,000 for all counts except the grand theft. On the grand theft, the fine will be in the amount of $1,000. The court will assess the civil penalty that was requested and I find it's appropriate under Idaho Code 1953-07 of $5,000 per victim on each of the three victims as a civil penalty. And then finally, the restitution which was requested by the state. Mr. Wood, if you could reiterate that number, $22,000 of what the restitution term is and I want to inquire if there's any other restitution being sought by the state. [00:28:52] Speaker 2: Your Honor, I believe I said $22,545 and the state would ask for an additional 30 days to submit any further restitution for the living victims who have been deemed as such by this court. [00:29:07] Speaker 1: The court will assess that restitution on the grand theft charge of $22,545 as shown through the evidence of trial and the court will allow 30 days for additional restitution requests but that will be waived if it's not submitted timely. That will conclude the court's sentencing on the charges. Mr. Thomas, do you have any questions on the sentence? No, Your Honor. Thank you. All right, Mr. Wood, do you have any questions? No, thank you. All right, counsel, before we conclude and Ms. Vallow, importantly, I need to advise you of the rights you have now. You do have the right to appeal to the Idaho Supreme Court from this judgment of conviction and you have a right to be represented by an attorney if you appeal. You're also advised if you can't afford an attorney, an attorney will be appointed for you at public expense and you only have 42 days to file an appeal. You also have the right to seek relief from my judgment under Idaho criminal 35. You have 120 days to file that motion if you believe a correction or reduction of this sentence is appropriate because it was either illegal or too harsh. And finally, you may also have rights to seek relief under the Idaho Uniform Post-Conviction Relief Act. Those actions have to be filed within one year from the day your right to appeal expires. Do you understand those appellate rights? All right, she acknowledged yes, the defendant will be required to submit DNA samples upon remand to the Idaho Department of Corrections. I'll ask the attorneys to please turn in any copies of the pre-sentence investigation reports or addenda so those can be kept in confidence and additional copies will be destroyed. And, Ms. Valedable, you are hereby remanded to the custody of the Sheriff of Fremont County to be delivered to the proper authorities of the Idaho Department of Corrections for execution of this sentence. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Now I'll conclude our sentencing hearing.