Lori Vallow Daybell is guilty of 2 murders. Why Idaho won’t pursue the death penalty
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A 12-person jury decided Lori Vallow Daybell’s fate Friday, as dozens of spectators — family members, friends, reporters and podcasters — awaited the looming verdict in her criminal trial. The jury of five women and seven men convicted the 49-year-old Rexburg mother of murdering two of her children.
Guilty of two first-degree murders, the 49-year-old woman now has the same convictions Gerald Pizzuto and Thomas Creech had when they were put on Idaho death row. Had Vallow Daybell been guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit murder — she was found guilty of three — she still would’ve been eligible for execution, prosecutors said.
But for Vallow Daybell, the death penalty is no longer an option.
Two weeks before a slew of potential jurors made their way to the Ada County Courthouse in early April, 7th District Judge Steven Boyce removed the death penalty as a potential sentence for Vallow Daybell.
Jessica Bublitz, a Boise-based defense attorney, told the Idaho Statesman in a phone interview that “it’s very uncommon” for a judge to strike the death penalty.
In fact, it’s never happened before in Idaho. Boyce said he couldn’t find any case in the state for which removal of capital punishment had been considered or ruled on — which means there isn’t a precedent for the decision in Idaho, according to an audio recording of the March hearing published by East Idaho News.
Boyce’s decision came after Vallow Daybell’s defense team asked Boyce to dismiss execution as an option. The March 5 motion listed several reasons, including an allegation that the prosecution made “multiple discovery violations” by submitting thousands of documents and pieces of evidence past a deadline set by the court.
