Herzog details life as the Bannock Co. Prosecutor

On Thursday afternoon the calm and collected Bannock County prosecuting attorney Stephen Herzog let us all in on a little secret elected county officials rarely get a chance to express as he stood before the room of curious Pocatello Rotarians.

“Not knowing everything but still living and learning along the way is what makes this job exciting,” Herzog said as he began to detail the life of a county prosecutor.

And perhaps he sums it up best.

“Basically, we chase around the bad guys.”

In fact, the wide-array of criminals we hear about on the spectrum of “bad” ranges on a scale of anywhere from misdemeanors and infractions to what we saw with Boede Paul after he confessed to killing and burying his girlfriend before his fatal stand-off with police.

All of those cases run across Herzog’s desk at one point in time, and he’s constantly cranking-out more of a work overload than what most county prosecutors ever have to handle on a daily basis.

During his discussion with the Pocatello Rotary Club, he also addressed the changing legal environment we’re facing.

For example, while nearby states are either legalizing marijuana or easing their drug policies, Idaho is caught in the middle.

“The state is also trying to adopt a way to test for marijuana in your blood the same way you do with alcohol, but this system hasn’t yet been implemented,” Herzog added.

He also pointed-out some of the good news his office has been able to celebrate this past year.

For one, the county was able to help negotiate the new gas technology changes to the landfill, as well as the Portneuf Health Care Foundation’s Wellness Complex, and a new office change which is now ADA compliant.

Herzog also said, with all of the good, comes the bad – and for some situations, “bad” doesn’t even begin to describe it.

“It was only my third day into my tenure when Angelea Schultz’s body went missing and (Paul), who wasn’t even a suspect in the case at the time, told police where he buried her body,” Herzog said. “It was a terrible situation.”

Herzog also stressed his gratitude toward local law enforcement officers during a time when law enforcement has been under heat nationwide.

“I’m confident in their ability to deal with people in a humane and civil manner…they do a good job having to deal with some really horrible situations,” Herzog said, later drawing on the Petco shooting as an example.

In response to the recent Cold Justice crew coming in to help solve the Nori Jones cold case, Herzog said he was skeptical at first, expecting the show to be another hokey, over-dramatization of the case.

“But, they soon knew the case as well as the detectives, they were very professional, they knew who they needed to interview over again, and they even paid for the testing. They were there to help solve the case an speed-up the process.”

Murder suspect in the case Brad Compher still awaits his preliminary hearing in April.

Also in April, Herzog said Torey Adamcik will be back in court on two issues for an evidentiary hearing, where he will try to prove his attorney made significant enough errors that impacted the outcome of his trial.

“The best-case scenario for the state and the victim’s family will be that the judge will not find an error on the attorney’s part, and that it didn’t impact the outcome of the trial so his sentence will remain in place.”

The worst case scenario?

Herzog said the worst outcome would be if the judge finds failures on the attorney’s part which impacted the outcome of his trial, so there could be a retrial.

However, Herzog is confident we probably won’t be looking at the latter.

Next, Josephine Theboy will be back in court sometime in the near future now that Herzog and his team have submitted new evidence for testing at a private lab in Utah on Tuesday.

Of that evidence is a shirt belonging to Theboy which is believed to have the victim’s blood on it.

Theboy was facing murder charges until the judge dismissed the case in December due to a lack of evidence.

Herzog said the state normally submits evidence to Idaho State Police’s only forensic lab where it has only one DNA analyst working overtime on a backlog of evidence coming in from across the state.

“So, if you submit DNA for testing, it’s going to be a long time getting the results back and they may not have time to go through everything you want tested,” Herzog said.

But the private lab has several analysts working at one time so there is, at most, a 60-day turnaround time before Herzog’s office can get those results back.

He said it costs roughly $2,200 per day going through this process, or $720 per item that needs tested.

But, as seen previously in Theboy’s case, this evidence could lock her away or keep her free.

“Sure, it can get expensive, but if you look at the nature of the case and the importance of it, it’s nothing,” Herzog said.

Earlier this fall, former local FLDS leader Nathan Jessop has just finished serving his 90-jail sentence after found guilty on three counts of misdemeanor injury to a child.

Herzog said he can’t give any specific updates on the status of the boys who were taken from his Pocatello compound since they are minors, but can confirm two of the nine boys are living comfortably in local foster homes and said they are thriving.

Local neighbors and business owners who have interacted with the boys said the others were taken to Montana.