Faylene never wrote in her journals and apparently never told anyone about fearing that Doug would hurt her physically.
No one who sat through the Doug Grant trial could predict its outcome.
Doug and Faylene Grant with their two sons at their surprise July 2001 wedding in Las Vegas.
Faylene Grant
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Even whether it was a murder case was up for grabs.
In early 2002, then-assistant County Medical Examiner Arch Mosley ruled Faylene Grant's manner of death "undetermined," instead of a homicide, suicide, or accident.
"I have no evidence to support this being a homicide," Dr. Mosley testified to the visible chagrin of prosecutor Martinez.
Though the case against Doug Grant seemed anything but ironclad, he was on trial because a series of factors — many of them his own doing — had landed him there.
Two catastrophic events within 72 hours of each other — Faylene's potentially fatal fall off a cliff in Utah during the couple's second honeymoon, followed by her Ambien overdose and drowning — had occurred with her husband nearby. According to the couple's accounts afterward, Fay miraculously survived the 60-plus-foot fall at Timpanogos Cave National Monument only because a large tree slowed and cushioned her on the way down. Remarkably, she suffered only minor injuries.
Doug married his ex-girlfriend, Hilary Dewitt, within a month of Faylene's death, which infuriated and raised deep suspicions inside the dead woman's family, and propelled some of them into an investigative mode.
Most damning against Doug Grant was his seeming failure to call 911 after finding his wife submerged in their bathtub shortly after dawn on September 27, 2001. (Grant later told police and others that he had called 911, but computer records and other evidence, though inconclusive in some regards, failed to corroborate his account.) Instead, he twice phoned Chad White, a physician's assistant who had gone to the Grants' home the previous evening to examine Faylene's injuries.
White prescribed the sleeping pills and other drugs before he left the residence. Grant immediately filled the scrips at a pharmacy and then returned home for the evening. White dialed 911 the following morning after hearing from Grant, an acquaintance.
He told the emergency operator, "I told [Grant] to call 911, and he said, 'I'm afraid to. I'm afraid to.' I don't know why he said that."
Juan Martinez knew that, while perhaps suggestive of Grant's consciousness of guilt (morally or criminally), the lack of a 911 call might not be enough to prove first-degree murder. So now, in the waning moments of trial, he asked Judge Mahoney to add the less-serious homicide charges to the jury instructions.
Beyond "reckless," a prosecutor trying to win a manslaughter conviction must prove that a defendant "was aware of and showed a conscious disregard of a substantial and unjustifiable risk of death. The risk must be such that disregarding it is a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a reasonable person would observe in the situation."
The phrase "reasonable person" can spell trouble for the defense: Most jurors see themselves as reasonable, and a defendant — especially one who couldn't prove he called 911 to get help for his desperately injured wife — easily could seem grossly unreasonable.
Another section of the manslaughter law says a defendant is guilty if he helps someone commit suicide.
Juan Martinez told Judge Mahoney that he still considered Grant guilty of premeditated murder but feared appellate reversal if he didn't ask for the lesser charges and the jury returned a first-degree conviction. Yet his unexpected handwringing seemed more an admission that proving premeditation to 12 jurors would be too much for him to achieve, given the circumstances.
The prosecutor now speculated that Faylene indeed may have been seriously depressed before she died (which is what Mel McDonald had been suggesting for the whole trial), and that her husband could have "recklessly" abetted her death.
"He's . . . indifferent to that depression, indifferent to her wants of committing suicide," Martinez said. "He didn't care about her, bottom line."
Not caring may not rise to the level of causing someone's death, recklessly or intentionally, but no matter to the prosecutor. His task was to sell the jury that the defendant was a manipulative Lothario with a heart of stone and a teenager's need for instant gratification.
Mel McDonald tried to convince the judge that his client was guilty of either first-degree murder or nothing.
"Every facet of this case reeks of first-degree murder," he told Mahoney, sounding in this role reversal like a prosecutor. "It's either all or nothing. To put her in the tub, [given that] she's so disabled, is not an accident. It's as premeditated as you can possibly go . . . To confuse this jury and try to come in with some spin, there's no evidence to support it."
The defense attorney and his client looked hangdog after the hearing.
Within a few days, Judge Mahoney issued her ruling on the all-important jury instructions: For legal reasons, she wouldn't allow the jurors to consider the "assisted suicide" part of the manslaughter statute. But she said she would allow them to deliberate first- and second-degree murder, as well as manslaughter.
"I feel like I'm trapped," Doug Grant told New Times soon after he got word. "I'm really scared they're going to convict me of manslaughter, even though I never would have hurt Faylene."
