State v. Worthen

765 P.2d 839, 89 Utah Adv. Rep. 21, 1988 Utah LEXIS 84, 1988 WL 96890
CourtUtah Supreme Court
DecidedAugust 23, 1988
Docket20328
StatusPublished
Cited by50 cases

This text of 765 P.2d 839 (State v. Worthen) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Utah Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Worthen, 765 P.2d 839, 89 Utah Adv. Rep. 21, 1988 Utah LEXIS 84, 1988 WL 96890 (Utah 1988).

Opinions

STEWART, Justice:

Scott G. Worthen was convicted by a jury of second degree murder for the death of his stepdaughter, three-year-old Heidi Pavich. On appeal, he asserts that the trial court erred in (1) unduly limiting the scope of voir dire examination; (2) not allowing him to call the prosecutor as a witness or to introduce into evidence a letter written by the prosecutor; (3) denying him due process of law because the prosecutor failed to disclose material exculpatory evidence; and (4) denying his motion for a new trial. He also asserts that the evidence was insufficient as a matter of law to support a finding of “depraved indifference” under the second degree murder statute.

I. THE FACTS

Kathleen and Mike Pavich were married in 1977 and had two daughters, Jodi and Heidi. Heidi was the younger daughter. When the Paviches divorced, Kathleen was awarded custody of the two children.

The defendant, Scott Worthen, met Kathleen in September, 1981. In December, 1981, he began living with her, and in September, 1982, they were married. During the month of April, 1982, six months before her death, when Heidi was twenty-six to twenty-eight months old, she began to suffer multiple bruises and injuries, and several different physicians treated her for those injuries. Frequently, Kathleen and Scott’s explanation for Heidi’s injuries was that she had fallen down stairs or out of bed. For example, in June, 1982, the explanation was that Heidi had an inner ear problem that caused her to lose her balance. Heidi’s personality also changed during the last two to three months of her life. She no longer liked to feed herself and regressed from being toilet trained to incontinence. Her moods were very erratic. Sometimes she was playful like a normal [841]*841child, but at other times she would lie down and stare, as if she were afraid to go to sleep.

On the weekend before Heidi’s death, Mike Pavieh picked up the girls for a weekend visitation. On Saturday and Sunday Heidi acted normally. On Monday morning, Heidi did not eat her cereal, but drank the milk from her cereal. (We refer to the times she ate on this day because of their relevance in light of the expert testimony in determining when the fatal injury was sustained.) When she arrived at the daycare center, she asked for a drink. Two day-care center employees testified that they did not see anything unusual about Heidi that day. She ate her lunch and seemed all right when she left at 3:30 p.m. While at home that afternoon, in Kathleen’s custody, Heidi asked for and ate part of a cookie and went outside to play with her mother and sister. At 5:15 p.m., when the defendant arrived home, Heidi was fine, and Kathleen left the house to go to a spa. Heidi refused to eat after her mother returned home around 7:30 p.m.

Scott Worthen testified concerning his version of the events which occurred the evening of Heidi’s death. Shortly after Kathleen left, Scott served Heidi a bowl of stew, but Heidi did not eat it. When Heidi informed Scott that she needed to go to the bathroom, he took her into the bathroom and told her to get on the toilet. She wandered out of the bathroom and into her bedroom, where defendant found her and picked her up. She then had a bowel movement that soiled his leg; she also began to look pale and vomited. Defendant left Heidi in the bathroom for the next forty-five minutes while he and Jodi ate dinner and worked on projects. Kathleen phoned ten or twelve minutes after she left for the spa, and Scott told her that he was trying to feed the girls and that Heidi had soiled his leg. Kathleen asked Scott if she should come home, and he replied that she should go to the spa and that he and Jodi would clean up.

Heidi looked ill when Scott retrieved her from the bathroom. He prepared her for bed and laid her down on the bed with towels to protect the bedding. He then stepped out on the porch to get some fresh air. Heidi threw up in her bed, rolled over in the vomit, and got it in her hair. The defendant tried to rinse the vomit off Heidi in the shower, but she resisted being held under the spray. While she was fighting, Scott pulled her into the spray, and because there was not enough water pressure to remove the vomit from Heidi’s hair, Scott held her close to the shower head. Heidi’s continued fighting caused her to slip out of his hands. When the defendant grabbed her, they both fell backwards, and he hit his head and she landed on his chest. After the shower, Worthen put her back in bed, but she vomited again prior to Kathleen’s return. Worthen returned to her bedroom and found Heidi trying to crawl under her bed. She had spit up a little, and defendant cleaned her up.

When Kathleen returned from the spa, both Heidi and Scott were wet from the shower and Jodi and Scott were dressing Heidi. At that time, Scott informed Kathleen that Heidi would probably have red marks on her chest because he and Heidi had slipped in the shower and he had grabbed her really hard and “dug her.” Kathleen then took over, and Scott and Jodi left for about forty-five minutes. Heidi told her mother that her “tummy” hurt and continued wretching. Although Kathleen gave Heidi coke syrup, her stomach did not settle down, and she continued wretching at approximately twenty to thirty-minute intervals for an uncertain period of time. Finally, Heidi fell asleep.

At about 3:30 a.m., Scott Worthen responded to Heidi’s screams. He found her in the kitchen beside some spilled milk and told her to go back to bed while he cleaned up the milk. Before he went back to bed, he checked on Heidi. Finding that she was “ice cold,” he prepared a bath for her. While Heidi was bathing, her tongue moved slowly in and out of her mouth, and her eyes rolled to one side of her head. Kathleen came to help, and Heidi became alert again. Worthen commented that he thought Heidi had the flu, which she had been experiencing on and off for the previous two weeks, and then he went back to [842]*842bed, leaving Heidi with Kathleen, who put her back to bed.

Worthen awoke again at 5:00 a.m. Before dressing for work, he went into Heidi’s room. Heidi was facing the window, and he was immediately aware that she was not breathing. He attempted to resuscitate her while Kathleen phoned for help. Paramedics and police officers soon arrived and were unable to revive Heidi.

Roger Anderson, a deputy county sheriff, made a routine examination of Heidi’s body. He testified that both rigor mortis and liver mortis were present in the body, although neither process was completed. Her body was covered with many bruises, her abdomen was distended and rigid, and there were about seventeen small abrasions on her chest. Dr. Monique Ryser, State Medical Examiner, conducted an autopsy and determined the cause of death to be multiple blunt injuries which resulted in a completely transected duodenum, causing severe peritonitis. The duodenum is behind the stomach and directly in front of the vertebral column. Dr. Ryser was uncertain whether the blow that had caused the injury had come from the front or the back. However, she testified:

To tear the organ the way the organ is torn [requires that the organ be] compressed against the backbone by a blow that comes either from the front to back, or back to front, and presses all the tissue together, so that the two structures are cut or torn over the sharp bone that is your vertebral spine.

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Bluebook (online)
765 P.2d 839, 89 Utah Adv. Rep. 21, 1988 Utah LEXIS 84, 1988 WL 96890, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-worthen-utah-1988.