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Thread: Brenda Emile Sentenced to LWOP in 2017 UT Murder of 3-Year-Old Daughter, Angelina Costello

  1. #11
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    Attorney contract issues push back hearing for Ogden death penalty case

    By Jacob Scholl
    Standard-Examiner

    OGDEN — A couple accused of killing their 3-year-old child appeared in court Thursday for the first time since prosecutors filed their intent to seek the death penalty against them.

    Miller Costello, 26, and Brenda Emile, 23, appeared in court but didn’t say much, as most of the chatter was between attorneys.

    Defense attorneys asked to continue the hearing so they could sort out the issue of contracts with the state. One attorney stated that the typical contracts for public defenders do not extend into capital cases unless the state approves a new agreement.

    Judge Michael DiReda agreed and continued the hearing to another date.

    DiReda also suggested that prosecutors move quickly toward securing a mitigation expert that will meticulously comb through the case.

    No trial dates were set during the Thursday morning hearing, but the court will discuss scheduling when they meet for their next hearing on Aug. 13 in Ogden.

    On July 6, 2017, police responded to a 911 call about a 3-year-old who was unconscious and not breathing.

    The two were arrested and charged with aggravated murder just days after the severely malnourished child was found with injuries to her head, chest, wrists, legs and a “piece missing” from her nose, according to an Ogden Police detective.

    Her injuries ranged from brain hemorrhages to cigarette burns, according to the medical examiner.

    http://www.standard.net/Courts/2018/...al-murder-case
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  2. #12
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Funds authorized for defense of Ogden couple in death penalty case

    By Annie Knox
    KSL.com

    OGDEN — Weber County commissioners have agreed to continue covering the cost of public defenders for two Ogden parents charged with murdering their toddler in a potential death penalty case.

    The county's three-member commission unanimously approved new contracts for the attorneys at its Tuesday meeting, but not without some reluctance.

    "This is frustrating," said Commissioner Jim Harvey. "People in the community make horrible decisions each county taxpayer, their property tax, has to pay for, because of state code. That bothers me."

    A judge early in the case decided Brenda Emile, 23, and Miller Costello, 26, could not afford to hire lawyers and appointed them public defenders. State law requires the county to foot the bill.

    But Weber's existing contracts with defense attorneys do not cover death penalty cases, because of the vast amounts of time and work they can take, so a new deal was needed, deputy Weber County attorney Bryan Baron told the board.

    The contracts provided by the county show a lead attorney for each parent will receive $170 per hour, and a second attorney will make $140 an hour. Attorney fees for each defendant are capped at $100,000, or $70,000 if prosecutors decide before a trial to no longer pursue a death penalty.

    Baron said the total cost of the case is a "shot in the dark." But he reviewed the cost of defense in nine other capital cases in Utah and found they cost an average of $220,000 apiece, he said.

    Weber County officials previously decided not to contribute to a statewide defense fund that helps local government covers such costs because of the price tag, Baron said Tuesday, but he didn't know the exact fee.

    The new contracts will help inform the commission's decision when it next considers whether to buy into a state indigent defense fund, but no immediate decision has been made, Harvey said Wednesday.

    Prosecutors have said they would seek the death penalty if the couple accused of beating, burning and not feeding their daughter Angelina is convicted of a charge of aggravated murder, a first-degree felony. The pair has pleaded not guilty and is due back in court in Ogden Aug. 13.

    https://www.ksl.com/article/46373271...h-penalty-case
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  3. #13
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Trial dates set for Ogden couple accused of abusing, killing 3-year-old daughter in 2017

    By JACOB SCHOLL
    Standard-Examiner

    OGDEN — Trial dates have been set for an Ogden couple facing capital murder charges following the death of their 3-year-old daughter in 2017.

    Attorneys decided during a Thursday morning hearing that Miller Costello and Brenda Emile will go to trial starting in August 2020. Both are charged with capital murder, which could be punishable by death.

    The couple’s trial will begin in August and will take up the entire month before continuing into September, and four of the five days each week being used for the trial.

    Costello and Emile are accused of abusing their daughter, Angelina Costello, until she died.

    On July 6, 2017, police responded to a 911 call about the child who was unconscious and not breathing.

    The two were arrested and charged with aggravated murder just days after the severely malnourished child was found with injuries to her head, chest, wrists, legs and a “piece missing” from her nose, according to an Ogden Police detective.

    During a two-day preliminary hearing in February, police and medical professionals outlined the ”horrifying” abuse the child suffered before she died.

    The girl’s injuries ranged from brain hemorrhages to cigarette burns, according to the medical examiner. At the time of her death, Angelina Costello weighed 13 pounds. One prosecutor said during the February hearing “that should be the weight of a 3-month-old, not a 3-year-old.”

    An Ogden Police detective and a medical examiner described the 3-year-old as looking like a “child from a concentration camp,” during the preliminary hearings.

    In July, Weber County prosecutors filed their intent to seek the death penalty against the couple, bumping their aggravated murder charges up to capital offenses. A month later, Weber County Commissioners approved contracts for Costello and Emile’s attorneys, moving the case forward.

    Attorneys for Costello and Emile will have until January 2020 to file motions in the case.

    The couple’s next hearing will be in three months, and is scheduled to take place on March 14 in Ogden’s 2nd District Court.

    https://www.standard.net/news/local/...745b053ba.html
    In the Shadow of Your Wings
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  4. #14
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    Lawyers for Ogden couple charged with killing their toddler argue Utah's death penalty is unconstitutional

    By Mark Shenefelt
    Standard-Examiner

    OGDEN — An Ogden judge is being urged to declare Utah's death penalty unconstitutional because, attorneys in a capital homicide case argue, the sentencing portion of the law shifts the burden of proof to defendants.

    Aggravating factors already have been decided at trial, thereby putting the onus on the defense during the sentencing phase, an attorney representing Miller Costello, 28, asserted in a motion filed April 17 in 2nd District Court.

    Costello and his wife, Brenda Emile, 25, are charged with capital murder in the July 6, 2017, death of their 3-year-old daughter, Angelina Costello.

    Police said the girl suffered prolonged abuse. She had bruises, cuts, burns, open sores and scrapes on her face, hands, legs, head and neck.

    The Weber County Attorney's Office is seeking the death penalty against both defendants upon conviction.

    "Utah’s scheme shifts the burden to the defendant at the sentencing hearing," Costello attorney Randall Marshall said in the motion.

    He said the shift is constitutionally impermissible because, he contends, it violates both a defendant’s procedural due process protections under the state and federal constitutions and the constitutional prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment.

    At sentencing the state "cannot require a defendant to prove his life should be spared," Marshall said, adding prosecutors "must have the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the death is the appropriate penalty."

    During a trial's innocence phase, prosecutors must convince a jury that at least one aggravating circumstance — in this case, such as child abuse — occurred to justify the capital murder charge.

    Marshall contended that because an aggravating circumstance already has been determined if a jury finds a defendant guilty, it is unconstitutional to require a defendant to overcome that aggravating circumstance a second time during the sentencing phase.

    "Under Utah’s death penalty scheme, the finding of an aggravating circumstance at the guilt phase means that the defendant must produce mitigation evidence at the penalty phase to avoid the death penalty," Marshall wrote.

    "If the defendant fails to produce any mitigation evidence, the weight of the aggravating circumstance requires death. The burden shifts. The prosecution need not produce any evidence in aggravation."

    In a further motion filed April 21, Marshall asked the court to "preclude the use of aggravating circumstances in the penalty phase of defendant’s trial which duplicate elements of the underlying aggravated murder charge."

    Weber County Attorney Chris Allred on Friday declined to comment on the latest defense motions. He said his staff was working on responses to be filed before a scheduled May 22 hearing before Judge Michael DiReda.

    On Feb. 29, Costello's defense filed a related motion urging DiReda to strike the death penalty because "it has become cruel and unusual punishment by practice and the consensus of the Utah citizenry."

    In 1,043 intentional homicides in Utah from 2000 to 2018, only one resulted in a death sentence and Utah has performed only one execution, the motion said.

    https://www.standard.net/police-fire...39936de84.html
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  5. #15
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    The Justice Files: Husband professed innocence and blamed wife for child’s murder

    By Marcos Ortis
    ABC4 News

    OGDEN, Utah (ABC4) – Miller Costello was warned about marrying his wife.

    But he went ahead and married her. They lived in Billings, Montana raising three children. In 2015 the family moved to Ogden. On January, 2016 the couple was jailed following the discovery of their dead three-year old girl.

    The Weber County attorney eventually filed aggravated murder charges against the couple. If guilty, the death penalty is an option.

    After five years in jail, Costello is breaking his silence and blamed his wife for what happened to Angelina.

    He wrote to Judge Michael Direda, who is overseeing the case, “I had nothing to do with my daughter’s debt [sic]. I was always six days a week working in the scrap metel [sic] driving to other states picking up scrap copper.”

    Costello claimed Emille was a stay-at-home mother and the children’s only caretaker. He told the judge he returned home once a week, attended to the needs of his family, washed clothes and hit the road the next day.

    He wrote: “I wood [sic] never no [sic] why wood [sic] Brenda do this to are [sic] family. I don’t understand what was going in her head.”

    Costello never mentioned whether he detected anything wrong with Angelina. He made no mention of any physical injuries.

    He wrote: “No one nos [sic] how much I love my kids more than anything in this world. It’s not for a father to see his daughter debt [sic]. I can sleep at night noing [sic] that I never did anything to my daughter. What I don’t understand how she sleeps at night doing [sic] what she did to are [sic] daughter.”

    Costello said in the letter that his family was against their marriage and never liked Brenda before or after their wedding. He said his parents told him “she is evil” and warned him that Emille’s family “is very bad.”

    Her family reportedly has ties to a gypsy community. Costello claimed Emille did not want Angelina after her family learned that she was going to have a girl.

    Costello wrote: “Her dad & mom said kill that baby inside of you, is bad luck. If anyone that did (murder) is Brenda, her dad and mom. There [sic] were the only ones that were there.”

    He wrote of several physical beatings he received from Emille’s father. Costello claimed her father even beat him and locked him in a room for a week.

    “There was no more skin on my face (from the beatings)” he claimed in his letter. “Brenda & her dad mom took my daughter life away from me. I will see my daughter again.”

    Costello’s attorney said he was unaware that his client had written the letter and sent it to the judge.

    “I did not advise him to write the letter,” Randall Marshall said. “It is not part of my strategy. (But) I think he is sincere. I think it’s heartfelt. He, I believe just wants to be heard.”

    Marshall said the whole issue could turn up during his trial or as part of a plea bargain if there is one..

    But prosecutors laid out their case during a 2018 preliminary hearing. Police said Angelina weighed 13-pounds when they discovered her dead at the home. The officer testified she looked like a “holocaust victim” because her ribs were visible and had boney arms.

    Prosecutors also showed video recordings that the parents recorded on their cellphones. The recordings showed that Angelina was taunted and mocked by both parents. In one video, Angelina was forced to stand in the corner while the couple played with their other children.

    Miller and Emille will be back in court next month. Their attorneys filed a motion claiming the death penalty is unconstitutional. The hearing will address that issue. No trial date has been set.

    https://www.abc4.com/news/top-storie...childs-murder/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  6. #16
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    Trial set for parents 5 years after death of emaciated child

    By Annie Knox
    KSL News

    OGDEN — The trial for an Ogden couple whose deceased 3-year-old daughter was found so malnourished that police compared her to a Holocaust victim is set to happen two years later than originally planned, in large part because of the pandemic.

    Second District Judge Michael DiReda on Thursday scheduled a seven-week trial to begin Aug. 1, 2022, for Brenda Emile, 26, and Miller Costello, 29. Both have pleaded not guilty to aggravated murder, a capital offense.

    The judge set the trial for next summer after defense attorney Randall Marshall raised concerns about a potential resurgence of COVID-19 cases in the fall.

    When investigators arrived at the couple's Ogden home in 2017, they reported finding the couple's deceased daughter emaciated and neglected, describing her as a 13-pound skeletal figure with sunken eyes, thinning hair and little to no muscle. Police found 3-year-old Angelina Costello's cold body in a pink blanket and covered in a layer of makeup applied to disguise her injuries, court documents allege.

    Prosecutors at a 2018 preliminary hearing presented photos and videos from the couple's phones that showed the child appearing increasingly bruised and injured as her two siblings remained healthy, with her mother apparently taunting her with food and her father asking if she was "evil."

    The state alleges the two have ties to an itinerant community and have alternative names and addresses in multiple states.

    https://www.ksl.com/article/50183771...maciated-child
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  7. #17
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    Related:

    Defendant in Ogden death penalty case claims intellectual disability


    By Mark Shenefelt
    Standard-Examiner

    OGDEN — Attorneys for an Ogden man facing a death penalty trial are having him evaluated for intellectual disability, raising the possibility that the capital punishment option could be eliminated.

    Miller Costello, 30, and his wife, Brenda Emile, are charged with first-degree felony aggravated murder in the July 2017 death of their 3-year-old daughter, Angelina Costello. Charging documents alleged the couple subjected the girl to horrible injuries and ongoing abuse and malnutrition.

    During a 2nd District Court hearing on Friday afternoon, Judge Michael DiReda acknowledged a motion filed Wednesday by Costello’s attorney, Randall Marshall. The motion said Costello “intends to claim, and to offer evidence, that he is exempt from the death penalty” due to intellectual disability.

    Under state law, such an exemption takes effect if the court determines a defendant “has significant, subaverage general intellectual functioning (and) significant deficiencies in adaptive functioning, primarily in the areas of reasoning or impulse control.”

    Marshall said defense experts have evaluated Costello for the disability, and DiReda said he would take the next step as determined by state law: A court request to the Utah Department of Health and Human Services to assign at least two experts to evaluate Costello.

    If the state experts report that Costello has the disability, Weber County prosecutors would have the option of rebutting the finding with additional expert evaluation. This process could take several months, which led DiReda to cancel Costello’s scheduled August trial. The trial now might not be held until 2023.

    DiReda said he was perplexed about why Costello’s defense team had not raised the intellectual ability issue until now, nearly five years after the crime.

    “It should have been done sooner,” responded Marshall, a court-appointed attorney who handles numerous murder cases in the Ogden court. “I don’t make excuses, but there was quite a period of time during COVID that I struggled.”

    Emile is scheduled to go on trial in October. She and Costello have been held in the Weber County Jail since their daughter’s death.

    https://www.standard.net/police-fire...al-disability/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  8. #18
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    Emile to take plea bargain in daughter’s murder, avoiding death penalty

    By Mark Shenefelt

    OGDEN — When 3-year-old Angelina Costello died, she was emaciated and had cigarette burns around her body, one dabbed with makeup to conceal it. Five years later, her mother, Brenda Emile, who has spent most of her 20s in the Weber County Jail, has agreed to plead guilty to murder to avoid the death penalty.

    During a routine pretrial hearing on Tuesday afternoon, Emile’s attorney, Martin Gravis, asked Judge Michael DiReda for a brief pause so he could speak to his client privately. When the hearing resumed, Gravis signaled that Emile is prepared to plead guilty to first-degree felony aggravated murder, and in return prosecutors will agree to drop their pursuit of a death sentence.

    “At what point are we going to take a plea?” DiReda asked. Prosecutor Letitia Toombs of the Weber County Attorney’s Office confirmed that Emile has accepted the prosecution’s plea bargain offer, which “takes the death penalty off the table.”

    DiReda scheduled a hearing for 3:30 p.m. Friday to formalize the plea bargain. He said he would not cancel Emile’s scheduled Oct. 3-Nov. 4 trial until the Friday hearing.

    Toombs said the charge against Emile now will be treated as a first-degree felony aggravated murder, subject to 25 years to life in prison or life without the possibility of parole.

    Emile, 27, and her husband, Miller Costello, 30, have been jailed since July 6, 2017, the day their daughter died. During a preliminary hearing in the case in 2018, a state medical examiner cataloged the toddler’s injuries, which included brain bleeding, cigarette burns on her back, fingers and face, a large burn on her chest, and extreme emaciation. An Ogden Police Department detective testified that seeing the girl’s body “brought back memories of Holocaust victims,” according to past Standard-Examiner coverage.

    Early in the case, Gravis argued that physical evidence did not show Emile caused or was an accessory to the girl’s death. However, prosecutors pointed to her application of makeup to burns on the toddler’s body.

    Costello is scheduled to go on trial Jan. 30 through March 3, 2023. First, a two-part hearing is scheduled for Nov. 29 and Dec. 9 on an evaluation of Costello’s intellectual capacity. His attorney, Randall Marshall, in May filed a motion contending that Costello is intellectually disabled — a finding that, if confirmed, may make Costello ineligible for capital punishment.

    In the upcoming “Atkins hearing,” DiReda will consider arguments over Costello’s mental capacity, informed in part by state psychiatric evaluations that have been in progress. In the case of Atkins v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court in 2002 ruled that executions of mentally deficient criminals are “cruel and unusual punishments” prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.

    Emile’s plea comes after years of other motions and hearings over the death penalty. Last year, DiReda rejected arguments by Marshall and fellow defense attorney Jason Widdison that Utah’s death penalty law should be nullified on the grounds that a public consensus against capital punishment has evolved.

    While prosecutors today have become more selective in pushing for capital punishment and jurors “aren’t eager to do it,” Utah lawmakers over the years have added more legal factors justifying execution verdicts, Marshall argued.

    But DiReda ruled that the U.S. and Utah supreme courts “have made clear that the clear and most reliable objective evidence of contemporary values is legislation enacted” by state legislatures.

    Several efforts to abolish the death penalty have been made in the Utah Legislature but all have failed.

    DiReda also is handling the death penalty case of Douglas Lovell, who is on Utah’s death row for the 1985 murder of Joyce Yost of South Ogden. Lovell’s latest appeal is being heard by the Utah Supreme Court.

    https://www.standard.net/police-fire...death-penalty/
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    Senior Member CnCP Addict maybeacomedian's Avatar
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    Has Utah executed any Death Row inmates in the post-Furman era?

  10. #20
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Steven AB's Avatar
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    Seven including Gary Gilmore, the very first of the post-Furman era whose death in 1977 ended a 10-year period with zero executions in the entire United States.
    Last edited by Steven AB; 08-18-2022 at 09:10 AM.
    "If ever there were a case for a referendum, this is one on which the people should be allowed to express their own views and not irresponsible votes in the House of Commons." — Winston Churchill, on the death penalty

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