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PROVO, Utah (AP) -- Robert Allen Kartchner has asked to withdraw his guilty pleas in the kidnapping of a Mapleton boy and other crimes.
Defense attorney Rhome Zabriskie filed a motion in 4th District Court Monday saying the defense "has newly discovered evidence that may provide a basis for a defense of mental illness, and show that defendant lacked the mental state required as an element of the offense(s) charged."
Kartchner, 21, Orem, pleaded guilty in June to the abduction of the 5-year-old Mapleton boy. The child was on his way home from school last October when he was abducted and taken to the Diamond Fork area of Spanish Fork Canyon, where he abused him.
Kartchner allegedly cut the boy's arm, neck, and thigh with a knife and taped him up before leaving him in the bushes where he was later found by a father and a son installing a fence in the area.
Kartchner was also charged in the attempted kidnappings of an 11-year-old Provo boy in 2002 and an 8-year-old Provo boy in March 2003.
The former elementary school janitor pleaded guilty to child kidnapping and attempted child kidnapping and felony and misdemeanor child abuse and neglect in those crimes.
He pleaded no contest to aggravated in a separate 2002 hit-and-run which injured a 14-year-old boy.
He was scheduled to be sentenced Thursday, but is asking to withdraw all of his pleas.
(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
