PROVO ā A three-woman, five-man jury is now considering whether a man accused of causing the deaths of two 3-year-old Eagle Mountain boys is guilty of murder, manslaughter or automobile homicide.
Jurors began deliberations about 10:35 a.m. Friday.
Barlow was driving over 120 mph on Tiffany Lane in Eagle Mountain when he hit a bump, lost control, crashed through multiple fences and knocked down supports for horse stalls, according to witnesses who testified over the six days of evidence in the trial.
Odin Ratliff’s mother, Theresa Ratliff, testified on the first day of trial about finding her son and his friend, Hunter Jackson, in a horse stall both blue and lifeless. She tried to do CPR, knowing they were already gone.
“I just remember screaming. … I just sat there, and I held them,” she said.
Kent Cody Barlow, 28, is charged with two counts of murder, a first-degree felony, and possession or use of a controlled substance, a class A misdemeanor. In order to be found guilty of depraved indifference murder, as charged, the jury would need to decide that prosecutors proved Barlow knew that what he was doing created a high likelihood that someone would be killed, but he ignored the risk.
‘Signs of life’
Deputy Utah County attorney Michael Starrs said Cedar Valley Stables was “bustling with life” the evening of May 2, 2022 ā including Hunter and Odin, who were chasing cats, grabbing chicken eggs and playing with toy trucks in a place where they should have been safe.
“The signs of life were there; the signs of life were ignored. The signs of life were obvious; they weren’t hidden, they weren’t concealed. We know that Kent Barlow would have seen all those cars,” he said.
He said Barlow turned around and “gunned it,” pointing his car toward the stables. He said Barlow is not charged with knowingly killing the boys, but with “depraved indifference murder,” arguing it does not matter if Barlow saw the boys ā he knew his actions were dangerous.
Starrs said depraved indifference is shown by Barlow going 120 mph on a 45 mph street, ignoring his passengers “begging him, pleading him, stop, stop,” and causing danger to other drivers on the road who testified in the trial.
Starrs claimed Barlow was focused on his task of seeing how fast he could drive.
“Trust him when he says that he knows what he’s doing ā ‘Let’s race.’ ‘Let’s see how far this car can go,'” the attorney said.
He said Barlow was not so intoxicated he didn’t understand what he was doing, citing a previous 2019 conviction he was still under probation for after traveling 107 mph in a populated area while having meth in his backpack. A judge warned him that his actions were dangerous and could have resulted in deaths. Starrs asked the jury to consider how large the zone of destruction was in front of Barlow on that fateful day when Hunter and Odin were killed.
Square peg in a round hole
Barlow’s attorney, Justin Morrison, told the jurors their job is to find Barlow guilty of a homicide, but they need to consider which degree. He said prosecutors were “trying to force a square peg into a round hole” by pushing for murder convictions and “doing violence to the truth.”
Morrison said Barlow was not acting like he didn’t care who lived or died, or with depraved indifference.
“He would have to have been cold and depraved. My client got high and he was having too good a time, but he wasn’t a cold-blooded killer,” Morrison said.
He argued the facts of the case fit automobile homicide “like a glove,” which requires negligent action. He said manslaughter, requiring reckless action, fits the case too, but not as cleanly as automobile homicide.
“The state is overreaching. They are not content to let the facts just speak for themselves. … He hit a bump and that caused the car to lose control,” he said.
Morrison said everyone feels outrage for the boys’ deaths, but that should not cloud the truth. He told the jury that justice does not change reality; it demands truth rather than exaggeration. He said murder convictions in this case would be “vengeance disguised as justice.”
“Don’t let the government’s overreach twist this case into something that it’s not. ā¦ Hold him accountable for what he actually did, that’s what the law requires,” he said.
‘He didn’t care’
Deputy Utah County attorney Ryan McBride responded to Morrison’s analogy and said the murder charge does fit, asking the jury to consider it carefully.
He said negligence is someone not yielding at a yellow light, and recklessness would be someone weaving through traffic. What happened in this case is “a far cry from any of that.”
“The defendant could see the risk a mile away. … He accepted the risk when he pushed the launch button, when he put his foot on that pedal and floored it. ā¦ He knew of the risk when he floored it and went straight toward Cedar Valley Stables,” McBride said.
He said the law did not require Barlow to see the boys but to see the risks he caused. He said Barlow had driven past Cedar Valley Stables three other times that day. He also said passengers in the car could see the risks Barlow was causing, and they asked him to stop at least 11 times.
“He made a decision, he made a decision to use meth and drive at insane rates of speed, nearly killing many people that day. … It’s not that he didn’t know; it’s that he didn’t care,” McBride said.
In an interview after closing arguments, McBride said the jury has everything it needs to make a decision. He said the families of Hunter and Odin are “wonderful, strong people.”
“It’s our pleasure and our privilege to try to bring justice in some measure to them,” he said.
This story will be updated.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.