Law&Crime Sidebar - Jury Delivers Shocking Verdict in Softball Coach Sex Assault Case

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

RiLee Lutz, a former assistant softball coach in Bear Lake County, Idaho, says the county sheriff used misinformation and coercion to charge her with child sexual assault. Now that she’s gone to trial and been acquitted, Lutz is planning a major civil action against those who allegedly tried to ruin her. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber got all the details from Lutz’s attorney Kristian Beckett.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Watch Prime Crime with Jesse Weber NOW on Spotify! - https://bit.ly/4fRZvCTHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger and Christina FalconeScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. A former Idaho softball coach was accused of inappropriate contact with a minor, but a jury just acquitted her. And now she is planning a massive lawsuit against the sheriff and the prosecutor. Her lawyer is here to talk about it all. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. Jesse Weber.

Riley Ann Lutz has been fighting off allegations of sexual misconduct since 2023 when she was first accused of sexually abusing a 17-year-old student athlete from Bear Lake High School in Idaho. Lutz had been an assistant softball coach, but she had lost that job when these allegations came out. Now, Bear Lake County brought charges. She could have faced a life sentence in prison if she was convicted. But after a trial that lasted several days. It only took the jury 30 minutes to acquitter. And that now brings us to a new lawsuit that we're going to talk about. But here's what we know about the case to get you up the speed. So Lutz was arrested. In March of 2023, she was charged with two felony counts of

sexual battery of a minor, very serious charges. And authority said that this alleged abuse happened between September 2021 and June 2022 before the student turned 18. But Lutz and her attorney say the sheriff of Barley County, Sheriff Bart Heslington, launched this investigation, essentially based on misinformation lies. She claims the sheriff made all sorts of false statements, pushed for the prosecutor to file charges, which, by the way, Lutz believes was done maliciously. And this drama is unfolding, I should tell you, in the small city of Paris, Idaho, in the area around it. Now, Lutz says the sheriff knew the alleged victim, having been her basketball coach in middle school. The teen has reportedly had struggles with emotional well-being, her mental health,

intellectual limitations. And Lutz attorneys believe that the sheriff coerced her into accusing Lutz of Misconda, despite the alleged victim herself saying in the beginning that this wasn't true. Now Lutz claims that this young woman eventually changed her story, testified at trial, but according to local media outlets, she was never really able to clarify what exactly happened and when. And before Lutz went to trial in November, she filed a tort claim. So this is an intention to file a lawsuit against the government. This was going to be against Bear Lake County, the sheriff's office, the sheriff himself, a deputy of the prosecutor, and the woman, who's now an adult, because of the sheriff

accusing Lutz of sexually assaulting this person. Now, the claim was actually voluntarily dismissed by Lutz, but what it does is it gives us insight into what a new lawsuit expected to be filed in January will address. So according to this complaint, quote, quote, Sheriff Bart Heslington did not have any personal knowledge that the teen and Riley Lutz engaged in a sexual relationship before the teen turned 18 years old. Sheriff Bart Hesington lied about the extent of his knowledge regarding the nature and extent of the relationship between the teen and Riley Lutz to the teen's mother and the teen. Sheriff Bart Heslington sought to manipulate the teen with what he stated was what he knew about the relationship between the teen and Riley Lutz in an effort to overbear her will. And according to the complaint, the sheriff claimed that there was video, photo evidence of the sexual contact between Lutz and the teen.

But according to Lutz and her legal team, there is no evidence. And they say the sheriff knew that. And also, according to Lutz, there was a search warrant that was based on alleged misinformation from the sheriff that led to the department being able to see thousands of messages sent on Snapchat by Lutz over a period of several months. But according to them, no evidence was ever found of a sexual or romantic relationship between Lutz and the teen on that platform. Transcripts from interviews between the sheriff and the teen, they also appear to highlight what seems to be the confusion that this teen may have been experiencing. And the multiple times that she changed her story seemingly to agree with the sheriff. And when this case went to trial before Thanksgiving, the prosecutors called the sheriff, they called the alleged victim, they called the alleged victim's mother to testify. the defense called 22 of its own witnesses, including experts, colleagues, softball coaches, players, and family members of Lutz.

And Lutz herself even got on the stand and testified in her own defense. And as I mentioned, she was facing a life sentence if she were convicted, but she was acquitted. Hey, so before we go any further, I got something I have to tell you guys about. I host an executive producer show called Crime Crime with Jesse Weber. And now it is launched on Spotify. That's right. You can listen on the go. And this show puts a spotlight on those really shocking, infamous, controversial crime stories.

We go from beginning to end, from the 911 call to the verdict. We go through body cams, police interrogations, interviews with the players in the case. We want you to have a full understanding of the story from all sides. So right now you can click the link below and in the description to follow Prime Crime with Jesse Weber right now on Spotify. Now, Lutz's attorney is Christian Beckett. And he took on this case. And now he is planning a massive malicious prosecution. and defamation suit against the people that he says falsely accused his client and ruined her life.

So for that, I want to bring in Christian to talk about this right now. Christian, thanks so much for coming on. Really appreciate it. I mean, my goodness, so you're representing Ms. Lutz in two different capacities. You represented her at the criminal trial, got an acquittal, now representing her also in this civil action. First, I just, what was the reaction to the acquittal? You know, it was vindication, really. As far as Joy, the people of Bear Lake, I mean, they get it.

They understand their constitutional responsibility to listen to all the evidence. And the reality is that the state didn't have any evidence. In fact, when we spoke with the jurors afterwards, the decision was made within minutes of going in. We follow David Ball's rule-out theory that he just recently released. It's a system of reminding. the jury that the state has an obligation to rule out all reasonable doubts before they bring the case. And in this case, there wasn't. And in fact, during trial, we had several statements by the investigating officer that says, you know, we don't even know what the timeline is.

He also told us, don't let the truth get in the way of a good story. And that was a main theme of our case was that the investigating officer, the sheriff of the county, didn't let the truth get in the way of his good story. And his good story was making sure that there was a great big headline. And that was softball coach arrested in charge for sexual assault of one of her players. And the reality is that it wasn't true. Yeah, I want to explore that a little bit. Before we do, if you can put our eyes and ears into that courtroom for a minute,

the young woman who's at the center of this case, she testified, what were the problems in her testimony. So without going in too much detail, the young gal is adopted. She's an African-American in a white community. She has intellectual disabilities. She has some emotional problems, psychological mental health issues, and she was emotionally fragile. She had a relationship with the coach before. And when she ultimately got on the stand, you know, it took her. her four days of witness prep with the prosecutor before trial. To what? To be honest and to tell the truth. Why does it take four days? Well, the reason it takes four days is because she needed to be continued to remind it about what she had told the sheriff when he was examining her and

putting thoughts and words in her mind. So when she was on direct, she did a fairly passable job, but on cross-examination, she crumbled. And she essentially admitted to everything that we were asking her. And it showed the jury that she was very suggestible, that she would be willing to adopt anything that anybody told her. After the jury was released, the judge started asking her some questions as well to verify kind of what her capacity was to testify.

And the judge even remarked that her story changed so much that he wasn't sure that she was even. incredible but allowed it to go to the jury and and again it's just a really sad story she's a victim in this situation the same way my client was is and that's of a sheriff that did a poor investigation implanted ideas in this young gal's head and made him stick i know this is a rather long story but if you could briefly explain you know how did the the investigation even start what caused this and and again the bigger question is why would in your opinion based on your allegations, the sheriff and the prosecutors,

why were they out to get your client? I think that's the big question mark. So let's separate two different things. The prosecutor, I don't per se believe, was out to get my client as much as the prosecutor was willing to be a lap dog and a gopher for the sheriff. The sheriff had been a longtime elected person in the county. The prosecutor is not elected in that county. He's actually, there are no attorneys in that county.

So they went to a neighboring county contracted with him, and he had been the prosecutor for two years. The prior prosecutor had been disbarred for inappropriate contact with clients. And so there's a lot of different things that were going on there. As far as the sheriff, the sheriff, it's his fiefdom, right? It is just shy of 7,000 people in the county, and he rules it. And when I spoke with the prior prosecutor, I was trying to get some back around information. This was the first case I had taken in that county. It's about six hours from where I live in Boise area.

And he let me know. He said the sheriff picks and chooses who they go after. Why my client? One of the things that we have a belief on is that my client's grandmother used to work for the sheriff and gave him the double bird salute on our way out, telling how unethical he was and how he was a misappropriating tax. funds, a ton of different problems that she exposed. And we believe that this was a great opportunity for him to get back at somebody that was kind of a rival, somebody who was advocating

in the community that he wasn't a person that people should trust or support with their votes. And just to be clear, are you suggesting that the sheriff approached this young, who was a young girl at the time, just approached her and said, you know, put ideas in her head? Or did she come forward first. Again, how did this ignite? You know, it was just a confluence of some good facts for the sheriff in this situation that the young gal was suicidal. There was a gal on the softball team who had attempted suicide. And my client and the other coaches went to the team and said, hey, if anybody is having these problems, anybody is feeling the strain of that mental health, call us. And so what ended up happening is this year?

young gal started calling my client and my client would talk to her and reassure her that, you know, life was worth living. And through those conversations, the young gal developed an infatuation with my client, unknown to my client. She had told other players on the team that she thought my client was cute, attractive, things like that. Anyway, what ended up happening later was this gal actually kissed my client. My client said, no. That's not acceptable. drew the line, and my client thought that that was the end of it. Well, then the rumors started. The rumors started from this young gal saying, oh, I've got a sugar mom.

And what we found out through discovery, through a lot of subpoenas, a lot of hard work on our side, is that this gal, like I said, had a mental health disorder, that she needed a lot of attention. She didn't feel like she fit in. She felt like she was really an outsider and really was trying to get a lot of people's attention, did a lot of things to get attention. And one of the things was spreading rumors about being in a relationship with my client. So I can't really fault the sheriff's initial interest in this case, but I do fault the way that the investigation went forward. His first communication with her six minutes into the conversation with the victim when she denied any relationship at

all, he tells her, I know that there's a relationship. I have photos and I have videos and I know that there's a relationship. And the gal for about five or six minutes was like, no, no, that didn't really happen. And he kept pushing her and saying, no, I know it happened. I know it happened. I know it's true. And then finally, she was like, okay, so sure, there was a relationship. At the end of the first interview, there were two interviews back to back, 45 minutes apart. The first one, at the end of it, she said, don't tell my mom. Don't tell her. that I'm a lesbian, that I have same gender attraction, right? And 45 minutes later, sheriff shows up at her mom's house and outs her in front of her mom.

She starts crying. The sheriff goes, now I know you weren't honest with me before. So now tell me this actually happened. And it happened. And he started putting dates in her head, trying to get her to endorse dates that weren't true. And then ultimately, he started saying, you know, and she probably told you not to tell us. that there was a relationship she told you to be discreet she told you to do all these things and finally she just goes okay sure uh-huh all right and those were her responses and and the sheriff

told her and she touched you here and she touched you here and basically was just telling her what to do and when you watch the the interviews you go well this girl's just trying to get out of these things like she's just trying to accept whatever he says just to be done and that's what our we hired a police practice expert. We hired a psychologist, and both of them said, yeah, these interviewing tactics and techniques are really inappropriate with a victim and a witness. Let me ask you this real quick. You mentioned you spoke to the jurors after this case. Did you, you did, right? Yeah, we spoke to six of them. Two of them actually came up and gave my client a hug afterwards and said, I'm so sorry you had to go through this. So in other words, did they believe, did they believe that

this you're filing a malicious, you're going to file a malicious prosecution and defamation action. Did they believe that the sheriff, again, did this deliberately against your client, didn't have enough evidence that they, that she was a victim? Did they say that? Absolutely. And in fact, one of them that I spoke to, he had been in the military as part of counterterrorism task force. And he had knowledge about proper interviewing and interrogation and investigations. And he said this investigation was just. absolutely shot from the beginning. Again, the sheriff actually got up on the stand and testified, he testified that information in his reports were not accurate, that they were misrepresentations.

He wouldn't say that they were lies. He said that they were misremembered. So now that brings me to the next part. Okay. So now you're planning on filing this really big lawsuit, a malicious prosecution case, a defamation case. Talk to me about, you know, the burden. Is this a tough case to prove? Do you think you have the evidence to prove it. How will you prove it? You know, it's probably one of the toughest cases that you can try is, so with a judge, there's absolute immunity, unless you can prove some sort of criminal conduct. With a prosecutor, it's almost absolute immunity, right? So in order to show it, you have to show actual malice. You have to show the intention to bring forward a charge that was

not supported at all. And that's where I think we're going to have a little bit of difficulty here. is where the original allegations came to the sheriff through an appropriate means. It came to the school based upon rumors, and the sheriff started investigating. My problem was that the sheriff already made up his mind before he did the investigation. And so I think that that's where the malicious prosecution comes in. He had a reason to investigate based upon the rumor. He did not have any reason to believe that the rumors were true, and yet he had a personal relationship with this young gal before.

He was her basketball coach in the middle school. He knew the struggles that she had. He had investigated a prior false allegation that she had made to her brother. These are things that were concerning enough, but they didn't even disclose that prior false allegation until 18 months into the case. And it was, again, just a lot of hard work. And the state kept hiding evidence. And it was really frustrating trying to get everything to prove that the case was up. Anyway, as far as that false allegation, judge ultimately ruled that we couldn't bring it in. And it never even went before the jury anyway. But this is something

that the state knew and is something that the sheriff knew. And instead of disclosing it, they tried to hide it. And the defamation aspect? The defamation aspect is that he continued to tell this child that, and she was 17 years, if their allegations were true, it would have been, she was 17 years, 11 months old when this relationship started. Not even the, sexual contact of the alleged relationship, but when it started. So the defamation aspect of it is how he continued to tell her that he knew that the relationship existed, that he was certain that the relationship existed, that he told the mother that the relationship existed, even though he did not have any of that knowledge whatsoever.

So either he went forward in reckless disregard of the truth, or he knew that it wasn't true and that he had intended to push a false narrative forward in order to manipulate this person. And it's just a sad story. Christian, before I let you go, what is the goal here? Is there a number in place that you're looking for? Is there a payout that you're looking for? Is an apology from the sheriff or the prosecutors? What's the end goal with this lawsuit? Change. Well, so I've tried two cases now in this county over the last eight months, both of them acquittals. The county is a little fiefdom and it's something that there's too much corruption, too much cronyism. There's just way too much. While I was there, I was asked by several

of the community members, hey, we just need a prosecutor out here. Just come out here. You can be independent. Come out and do it. We want change. And that's the only way that sometimes change happens is when people have to write checks. And we know that in this case because we did public disclosure requests. We tried to get information, and we ultimately were able to win them writing us a check for our attorney's fees because they refused to provide public records. And then after that, they started providing us public records. So we know that making people write checks creates change, and that's what we're looking for here.

Christian Beckett, thanks so much for coming on. Congratulations to you and your client on this. this win, we will continue to follow it and see where it goes. Really appreciate it. Hey, thank you, sir. Appreciate to having you the opportunity to share the story. All right, everybody, that's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. Speak to you next time.

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