Hamblin hearing continued over defense charges

This article is an update to the ongoing story involving Joe Bennion, David Hamblin, and Jamin Darcy (Goel). To read the first story, click here.

Holdups in discovery have been the largest factor.

For at least the past three years, Hamblin has been the main target of unrelenting online attacks by a Fountain, Fla. resident, Jamin Darcy, who has accused him of engaging in Satanic rituals that have not only involved sexual abuse of children but also cannibalism and desecration of human bodies.

MANTI—A child sex abuse case against David Hamblin, 70, a former Provo psychologist who once owned a second home in Spring City, has been continued for another two weeks after prosecutors failed to provide evidence that had been requested by defense counsel, evidence the judge in the case had ordered turned over.

A similar case in the 4th District in Utah County was dismissed last month, mainly because Utah County investigators in that case failed to disclose all of their evidence to Hamblin’s defense attorneys, a process known as “discovery” that is required in all criminal cases.

Both the case, and the present case where the incidents are alleged to have occurred in , were filed in 2022. Holdups in discovery have been the largest factor prolonging the cases for more than two-and-a-half years.

For at least the past three years, Hamblin has been the main target of unrelenting online attacks by a Fountain, Fla. resident, Jamin Darcy, who has accused him of engaging in Satanic rituals that have not only involved sexual abuse of children but also cannibalism and desecration of human bodies.

Other residents of and , including artists Joe and Lee Bennion, have been targets of the same attacks. A 6th District judge has issued a civil stalking injunction against Darcy, which bars him from any communication with or about the Bennions that might cause them emotional distress.

In the 4th District case, a woman who would now be in her late 40s or early 50s, claims Hamblin abused her at his home in in the 1980s when she was about 8 and again in when she was 13. In that case, now dismissed, Hamblin had been facing six charges, including sodomy and rape of a child.

The dismissal of the case came after a assistant attorney general, who had been assigned to prosecute the case, reviewed evidence that was supposed to have been turned over to Hamblin’s defense counsel years earlier.

“I would like the attorneys to meet in person” as well as asking that Howard (the prosecutor) follow up with Frees (Hamblin’s defense attorney) to confirm that what he received was sufficient in both form and substance.

Judge Mandy Larsen, 6th District Court

The evidence included a taped interview in which the complainant described an encounter with supposed Satanists dressed in black robes. She said they surrounded her in an LDS chapel following her baptism.

The case against Hamblin currently in 6th District Court in Manti involves a man, now in his 30s, who says Hamblin abused him when he was a young child while Hamblin was providing therapy. In that case, Hamblin is charged with six counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child.

At the hearing last week in 6th District Court, prosecutors, including an attorney from the Utah County Attorney’s Office who has been assigned as a special assistant attorney general to prosecute Hamblin, reported they had turned over some evidence to Hamblin’s attorney, Brian Frees.

But Frees said all he got was one video file in which there was no audio, and in which a gray box had been inserted over the recording, blocking all of the interviewers except one.

“It’s not a video I can use,” Frees said. “My request is a full discovery of the complete file. I’d also like to address discovery that has been identified that perhaps has exculpatory evidence.” (Exculpatory evidence is evidence likely to result in dismissal of charges against a defendant.)

The possible exculpatory evidence could be from the same material that led to the dismissal in of charges against Hamblin.

From the beginning, evidence that should have been coming to Hamblin’s attorneys from prosecutors was slow getting there, and in most cases required the ruling of either 4th Court District Judge Robert Griffin, or in the 6th District Judge Marvin Bagley or Judge Mandy Larsen (Bagley and Larsen have both had the case assigned to them at different times).

The two child sex abuse cases were filed 19 days apart in the fall of 2022, by the same prosecutor, then Juab County Attorney Ryan Peters. (Peters led the case as a “special assistant attorney general.”)

The Utah County Attorney’s Office was disqualified from handling Hamblin’s case because of a conflict between Hamblin and David Leavitt, the attorney at the time.

Twelve days after the case was filed in , defense attorney Leah Aston, who at the time also represented Hamblin in , filed a request for discovery. Less than a month later, she filed a motion for “special discovery,” and two weeks later filed a motion to compel discovery and a second motion for special discovery.

The court docket reads the same way through last month, peppered here and there with court minutes such as “Counsel is still awaiting additional discovery” and “Discussion ensues on discovery issues.”

Judge Griffin finally issued an order in May 2024 that sounded fairly cut-and-dry: “The State is to produce all discovery within 30 days,” he said during a hearing to set a date for a preliminary hearing—more than a year and a half after the case was filed. Court rules require discovery to be handed over within four weeks.

Even then, results were slow.

Prosecutors objected to many of the requests for specific materials, which took time for the judge to render decisions and sometimes required hearings with oral arguments.

And the process of discovery may have been held up by changes in the prosecutorial team. Peters, who handled the case initially, stepped down when he was appointed to be a judge in the 4th.

The evidence in the case included a taped interview in which the complainant described an encounter with supposed Satanists dressed in black robes. She said they surrounded her in an LDS chapel following her baptism. Charges against Hamblin in that case have been dismissed.

After that, there was some wrangling to determine who would take over the prosecution. The Utah County Attorney’s Office was still conflicted off the case, but requested a reconsideration of that ruling. Judge Griffin upheld it, however.

Instead, certain Utah County Attorney”s Office prosecutors were deputized, as Peters had been, to be special assistant attorneys general. (The fact that the cases were being prosecuted by the Utah AG’s Office but by lawyers who de facto worked for has been a point of contention in both the and Sanpete cases).

The logjam began to break in December 2025, and by February, prosecutor Nathan Evershed began producing the evidence long sought by the defense.

“The discovery produced in this case includes more than 3,500 individual files or videos and thousands of pages,” Aston, Hamblin’s attorney, said this week. But even at that, she said she was “very confident that additional discovery has not been provided.”

Now that the case has been dismissed, it is likely that anything that isn’t already provided won’t be produced ever, unless requests for it by Frees in the Sanpete case are answered.

The Sanpete case hasn’t been so plagued by delays in discovery, but that may be because discovery has taken a back seat to other matters.

Changes in counsel on both sides took up a great deal of 2023, and the court spent most the year between February 2023 and February 2024 trying to resolve whether to remove the Utah County Attorney’s Office from the Sanpete case. (A situation exists now in Sanpete much as in the Utah County case, with Utah County prosecutors functioning as special attorneys with the Utah AG;s Office).

But the dismissal of the Utah County case gave new impetus for calls on prosecutors to provide the evidence they have.

In the Manti case on March 5, prosecutor Charlotte Howard said she had no explanation for why the video file Frees received appeared the way it did.

“I don’t know why they’re having problems viewing the video recordings. I don’t know how to help Mr. Frees unless we’re sitting right next to him while we view it,” she said.

Judge Larsen went almost that far in her order that prosecutors provide the evidence in a suitable form by the next hearing. “I would like the attorneys to meet in person” she said, as well as asking that Howard follow up with Frees to confirm that what he received was sufficient in both form and substance.

The next hearing in the case is set for Wednesday, March 19 at 1 p.m.