20-year-old man found not guilty of murder after 4 years of incarceration

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SALT LAKE CITY — A man incarcerated for four years on a charge of murder in connection with a drive-by shooting in Kearns was found not guilty Thursday.

Koak Pal Biel, now 20, was charged with murder as an adult, a first-degree felony, when he was just 16 years old. He also faced six counts of discharge of a firearm, a third-degree felony. The eight-person jury, which deliberated for about five hours, found Beil "not guilty" on each of the charges.

Biel was accused of firing the gun in the fatal drive-by shooting of 48-year-old Jawnie Wey, who was sitting on a couch in a Taylorsville home in front of a bay window on July 10, 2018.

Salt Lake County Deputy District Attorney Morgan Vedejs said Wey was planning a baby shower when she was shot in the back of the head. Her 13-year-old daughter was sitting next to her and held a towel to her head to stop the bleeding. Wey died a few days later in the hospital, court documents said.

Euziel De La Torre, 24, who was the driver of the car according to testimony at trial, pleaded guilty to the murder in a related case last year. He was sentenced in September to between 15 years and life in prison for the murder charge. Six counts of felony discharge of a firearm, a third-degree felony, and one count of obstructing justice, a second-degree felony, were dismissed as part of a plea deal.

Although he pleaded guilty to murder, De La Torre did not admit to shooting the gun. In his guilty plea, he admitted to being a knowing party to the offense and driving the car to the area while knowing that Biel intended to shoot the firearm at the house.

Wey's nephew was in a feud with De La Torre, according to court documents, over a dog that De La Torre claimed was stolen and was found in the nephew's possession. At the jury trial, lawyers presented multiple threatening social media posts from De La Torre about the dog that belonged to Biel's cousin.

Two passengers in the car said Biel shot the gun but later recanted their statements. One of the passengers declined to sign a witness statement that said Biel shot the gun and instead wrote Biel "had nothing to do with it." He claimed he changed his statement because De La Torre was in jail and so the witness was no longer afraid of retaliation from him.

The other passenger told the court that he was drunk that night and did not remember much from the shooting. Both witnesses testified in front of the jury, and the prosecutors played portions of their interviews with police where they said Biel shot the gun.

Initially, Biel's attorneys objected to having the two witnesses called to testify and their testimonies being compared with their initial police interviews. The court ruled in favor of Biel, saying prosecutors should not be allowed to call a witness who would testify in favor of the defense with the hope of making the jury doubt their testimony by comparing it with prior statements that were not given under oath.

That ruling, however, was appealed and the Utah Supreme Court reversed the decision, saying there is nothing prohibiting prosecutors from calling a witness for this purpose.

In her closing arguments, Vedejs said videos show the car did not stop or move erratically, and because casings from the bullets were found on the street and not in the car, the gun was shot by someone who was not driving. She also said the shots were intentional.

"These were not accidental, the placement of them was not accidental, and the firing of them was not accidental," Vedejs said. "There is only one intention when you fire this many shots at a house in this location of the home."

As hard as these cases are, as tragic and senseless as they are — and this was tragic and senseless in the death of Miss. Wey. Nevertheless, a guilty verdict of an innocent man is just as tragic. Don't let that happen here.

–Michael Sikora, defense attorney

Meanwhile, Michael Sikora, Biel's attorney, argued that the state needed to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the gun was in Biel's hand and said in order to find Biel guilty they must be "firmly convinced" that he is guilty.

"As hard as these cases are, as tragic and senseless as they are — and this was tragic and senseless in the death of Miss Wey — nevertheless, a guilty verdict of an innocent man is just as tragic. Don't let that happen here," Sikora said.

After the verdict was read, 3rd District Judge James Blanch said he would tell the Salt Lake County Jail to release Biel now that there are no charges against him.

Biel asked the court to allow him out of jail in early 2020 claiming that because he is Black and has asthma he was at a greater risk for COVID-19 and the jail was not sufficiently protecting him.

He also argued when he turned 18 that he should remain in a juvenile detention facility where he was making progress in high school classes instead of moving to the county jail. Around that time, his attorneys asked for the case to be dismissed because it was not moving forward and Biel had been in jail for a year with the trial postponed multiple times. The judge denied all of these requests.