SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Court of Appeals has reversed a sex offender's conviction after they say prosecutors failed to notify him they'd charged him or were prosecuting him.
In to a 74-page document filed by the Utah Court of Appeals on Friday, Judge Ryan Harris said the appellant, Chad Hintze, wasn't made aware of a charge against him for two years.
The charge, according to the documents, stemmed from an incident in June of 2016 in which Hintze and a teenage girl were eating and sitting on a park bench along the Jordan River Trail. Hintze and the girl were approached by three uniformed officers on bike patrol.
Hintze wasn't permitted to be there because he was convicted of attempted unlawful sexual activity with a minor in 2011. He was required to register as a sex offender following that incident.
For the 2016 incident, Hintze was ultimately charged by the state with one count of violation by a sex offender of a protected area.
Judge Harris' opinion in the documents goes on to say the state did not immediately file charges against Hintze.
In March of 2017, Hintze was charged with forcible sexual abuse, which is considered a second-degree felony. This incident happened in a separate and unrelated case. In August of 2017, Hintze was sentenced to a prison term of zero-to-five years based on that conviction.
"He should have spent separate times in jail for his two separate offenses," said Danielle Ahn, a candidate for Salt Lake County District Attorney.
Instead, Ahn says, he was punished for just the incident that took place in 2017.
It's something Ahn says is unacceptable.
"It's an injustice to the defendant, it's an injustice to the community and to the victim," she said.
FOX 13 News sat down with Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill Monday afternoon. He said the 2016 case involving Hintze was filed in 2018, which is within the two-year statute of limitations.
"When this case was filed, he had apparently been gone to prison, so we filed the charges, we asked for a warrant," said Gill.
Looking back on the case, Gill said Hintze was not served that warrant until the Board of Pardons was reviewing his case, while Hintze was housed in Kane County.
As for the Utah Court of Appeals decision, Gill says another issue brought up pertaining to that 2016 case was the underlying issue of the initial police contact, and whether that violated Hintze's Fourth Amendment rights in terms of probable cause.
"There was a hearing that was done, that at that time, the state prevailed on that," Gill said. "Tthe court ruled and they overruled."
FOX 13 News asked Gill about Hintze's status and if he was a free man at the moment, but the DA said he didn't know whether Hintze was in custody or not.
Bethany Crisp is the outreach coordinator with the Utah Coalition Against Sexual Assault.
"We just help, you know, create that statewide collaboration," she said.
Crisp said that in her line of work, victims often have a difficult and traumatic time when reporting crimes against them.
"The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network show that more than two out of every three sexual assaults go unreported," she said.
Crisp said some victims go through a lengthy trial only to then see the perpetrator walk free, which she says also makes it difficult for many of them to decide if they want to want to report that kind of crime or not.
"That's why this matter of reporting and making sure that people feel comfortable reporting is a public health concern," said Crisp.
In a split ruling, judges ruled that Hintze's Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial was violated. On that basis, they decided to reverse the conviction and remand with instructions to dismiss the charge from 2016.
FOX 13 News also spoke with former federal judge Paul Cassell about the dismissed case.
"So this was a case in which the DA'S office had filed charges and then took no action for two years to move the case forward," said Cassell, who is now a criminal law professor at the University of Utah, "And so if we're looking for who's responsible for the delay here, the Utah Court of Appeals has said the Salt Lake DA'S Office is the one that's ultimately responsible for moving this case forward and failed to do so."
Cassell went on to say that if the charges had been filed properly, it could have prevented the other crime from taking place.
