- Charges against Kristine Rogers, former Grand County chief public defender, were dismissed.
- Prosecutor Craig Halls requested dismissal mid-trial, citing procedural mistakes and misconduct.
- Rogers' defense attorney Ed Brass welcomed the decision, emphasizing justice was served.
MONTICELLO — Criminal charges against the former Grand County chief public defender have been dismissed after an unusual request from the prosecutor in the middle of the trial.
Kristine Rogers, 72, was on trial last week in 7th District Court on misdemeanor charges of assault, trespassing and damaging or interrupting a communication device. Prosecutors said she tried to illegally evict her tenants at a house in San Juan County last year.
Rogers pleaded not guilty and went to trial — twice. The first one ended in a mistrial, while the second one resulted in all charges being dismissed before a verdict was ever reached.
That request for dismissal came not from the defense attorney, but from the prosecutor.
"It's very rare that a prosecutor would go to all the work to get prepared for trial," said KSL legal analyst Greg Skordas, "and then during the course of the trial say, look, I can't do this anymore and dismiss it."
'What are you doing?'
According to prosecutors, on Sept. 19, 2024, Rogers went to a house she owns in Spanish Valley, entered without permission, and told her tenants to leave — despite being previously warned by a sheriff's deputy that she needed to go through the eviction process. Utah law lays out several steps landlords must take to legally evict a tenant from a property.
Cellphone video obtained by KSL shows Rogers inside the house complaining about dogs on the property and other things while threatening to charge the tenant's parents — who were there at the time — with "trespass." Then, Rogers walks toward a woman filming the interaction and slaps the phone out of her hand.
"What are you doing?" the woman asks. "Are you serious?"
"Are you serious?" Rogers responds as a child is heard crying in the background. "You think you're going to film me?"
Sheriff's deputies responded and spoke separately to Rogers and the tenants. A few weeks later, Rogers was criminally charged. Prosecutors said besides knocking the woman's phone away, Rogers also slapped her hand.
At the time this all happened, Rogers was managing public defender in Grand County, a position in charge of serving defendants who can't afford an attorney.
Two trials
Rogers went to trial in June 2025, but it ended in a mistrial. That happened after the woman whose phone was knocked out of her hands told the judge — in the presence of the jury — that she would like to "stay for sentencing, if that's OK," despite the fact that a verdict had not been reached.
Defense attorney Ed Brass called that a "wildly inappropriate, prejudicial remark," and he asked for a mistrial. Judge Samuel Chiara agreed, scheduling a second trial for November.
After jury selection, testimony in the second trial began Nov. 13 and lasted several hours. But then, as the same witness who caused the mistrial took the stand, things began to unravel. As the woman described Rogers coming into the house and knocking her phone away, she pulled a phone out and showed it.
"This is the phone that she knocked out of my hand, right here," she said.
The prosecutor, chief deputy county attorney Craig Halls, then tried to introduce that phone into evidence, which upset the defense attorney.
"This nonsense infuriates me," Brass told the judge, calling the witness's behavior "wrong" and accusing the prosecutor of "misconduct" by introducing evidence without any warning or prior disclosure to the defense team.
As Judge Chiara weighed whether to declare another mistrial, the prosecutor made a surprising request.
"I want to own up. This is my mistake," Halls told the court. "Based upon that, I mean, I'm feeling like — I've probably let a lot of people down — but I feel like what I want to do is make a motion to dismiss the case."
The judge agreed, dismissing all charges against Rogers with prejudice. That means the case cannot be filed again.
Reaction
Skordas, KSL's legal analyst, said it's difficult for a prosecutor to walk away mid-trial after all the work it took to get there, but a third attempt in this case may not have gone any better.
"This was already the second trial, and I think that the prosecutor may have felt that a witness — maybe this particular witness — was full of surprises and was doing things that was catching him off guard," Skordas said, "and maybe he just wasn't willing to go through that again."
The San Juan County Attorney's Office did not respond to a request for comment about what happened or how this case was handled.
"I think it was disposed of entirely appropriately and consistent with the law," said Brass, Rogers's defense attorney, in an interview with KSL on Tuesday. "There was misconduct in each trial in this case by government witnesses, and that thwarted the full exposure of their dishonesty and perjury, but that's fine because the end result is that justice was done."
The family at the center of the initial eviction attempt was eventually ordered to leave the property after Rogers filed for eviction — legally — in court. They did not immediately have a comment on how the criminal case against their former landlord concluded.
As for Rogers, she is no longer the managing public defender for Grand County. Her contract ended in September and was not renewed.
