Utah County agrees to pay $1.8M for defense of man charged with capital murder, settling lawsuit

PROVO — Attorneys representing Michael Jayne in a lawsuit seeking more funds for his defense said they reached a settlement with Utah County on Friday.

Utah County prosecutors are seeking the death penalty in a case against Jayne, 44, who is accused of hitting and killing Santaquin Police Sgt. Bill Hooser. He is charged with aggravated murder, a capital offense.

Jayne filed a lawsuit in April claiming his defense was compromised because it did not have the funding needed for a death penalty case. He compared the money for his case — a $200,000 cap on attorneys' fees, with $140,000 for other expenses — with the $1 million initially approved for Tyler Robinson's defense.

The Utah District Court held a hearing in the case in July where the judge said the $200,000 cap for the capital case seems "just flat out per se unreasonable. It cannot equate to constitutionally effective counsel."

The judge then ordered the parties to work to settle the lawsuit and provide more funding. Jayne's attorneys said Friday that Utah County has agreed to pay $1.8 million for Jayne's defense, including the fees and expenses it has already paid. The settlement also allows for Jayne's defense attorneys to obtain more funding if a panel of attorneys qualified for capital cases approves it.

Jayne, 44, of Garrett, Indiana, is accused of killing Hooser on May 5, 2024. He left a traffic stop in a semitruck he was driving, flipped around on I-15's northbound lanes near Santaquin and drove into Hooser, according to charging documents. His attorneys claim Jayne did not see Hooser and did not intentionally kill the sergeant.

One of his attorneys in the civil lawsuit, Elizabeth Wang, said in a press release that providing a "high-quality defense" in a death penalty case is "a core tenet of our justice system."

The court found that Jayne was not able to pay for his defense at his initial appearance. However, the lawsuit argued the cap on his attorneys' fees meant the money the county agreed to pay was not sufficient for a case like his.

Neal Hamilton, another attorney in the lawsuit, said a death penalty case — the most serious type of case — needs to be properly funded.

"If the State wants to take someone's life, they are constitutionally obligated to provide high quality representation. If they don't want to pay for high-quality representation, they should not be trying to kill them," he said.

The statement from his attorneys said Utah created the Indigent Aggravated Murder Defense Fund to help pay for defense attorneys in cases like this, but counties have the option of whether to contribute to and benefit from the fund. Utah County has chosen not to participate.

Jayne's case got a slow start in part because of the struggle to find attorneys to represent him. A year after the killing, he expressed concerns about his defense because it is a death-penalty case; he is entitled to a second attorney, but he did not yet have one.

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