ST. GEORGE — The state prevailed during a sentencing hearing in 5th District Court last week in a case involving a defendant who attempted to grab an officer’s duty weapon during a DUI arrest last year.
Jason Jay Ashley, 33, appeared on two charge via video Wednesday for a sentencing hearing before District Judge G. Michael Westfall — first-degree felony of disarming a police officer, as well as a misdemeanor DUI with a minor in the vehicle.
Westfall entertained pre-sentencing arguments from the prosecution and the defense and ultimately sentenced Ashley to serve five years to life in Utah State Prison on the first-degree felony, and a year on the misdemeanor DUI charge. Both sentences were ordered to be served concurrently in prison.
The defendant remains in Purgatory Correctional Facility, where he has been housed since his arrest, until he is transported to Utah State Prison.
At the time the case was filed, the defendant faced four other misdemeanors as well, including failing to stop at command of law enforcement and three traffic-related offenses.
Under the terms of the plea agreement, the misdemeanor charges were dropped in exchange for a guilty plea to the first-degree felony and DUI. Additionally, all charges in three other cases filed in 2021 involving felony and misdemeanor drug and domestic violence charges were also dismissed under a global agreement between the parties.
The first-degree felony case involving the peace officer was filed following an arrest on Oct. 28, 2021, which is when officers stopped a vehicle shortly after 1 a.m. when they noticed there were no license plates on the car.
According to charging documents filed after the arrest, the officer noted the driver’s eyes were red, his speech slurred and he was having difficulty navigating his cell phone to retrieve insurance information. These signs led authorities to suspect the driver, identified as Ashley, was driving under the influence.
Officers learned there were four active warrants for the suspect’s arrest, and when backup arrived, the suspect was advised he was being detained on the warrants. Officers administered a field sobriety test, which the suspect reportedly failed.
When Ashley was told he failed the test, the officer noted, the suspect said “really” and then bolted from police.
Two officers grabbed the suspect and struggled to detain him while yelling at the suspect to get on the ground, commands the suspect failed to comply with, the report states. During the struggle, one of the officers yelled to the other that Ashley was “going for” the officer’s gun.
Additional officers were able to detain the suspect who suffered a facial injury during the incident. Ashley was first transported to the hospital for medical attention and then was booked into jail on multiple charges as listed in the report. The arresting officer also noted the suspect’s extensive criminal history that included cases involving domestic violence, drug involvement and an assault on police officers. That case was filed in 2018 involving charges of resisting arrest and failing to stop at an officer’s command.
The report also states that a number of police incidents “appear to be in front of [Ashley’s] kids or he has his child with him during the incident,” such as the case with the October 2021 arrest.
During the sentencing hearing Wednesday, Prosecutor Jerry Jaeger opened by saying the state strongly recommended Ashley be sentenced to serve time in prison, based on the defendant’s risk analysis showing he ranked high or very high in all factors. The report also revealed that Ashley appeared to minimize his conduct in a case involving crimes that were “very serious,” the prosecutor said.
Jaeger went over the facts of the case by saying the defendant was driving under the influence of methamphetamine and marijuana – with his 8-year-old daughter in the vehicle. When he was pulled over, the prosecutor said, the defendant admittedly attempted to run but was caught, which is when Ashley fought with officers.
During the scuffle, the prosecutor said, the defendant attempted to take a duty weapon from one of the officers, an action which Jaeger described as “a very big concern; a huge safety problem for officers and for our community.”
The prosecutor also mentioned the defendant’s criminal history with cases involving fights with police officers, “which is extremely problematic,” he said, including the four cases for which the defendant was appearing.
Jaeger also said the state agreed to dismiss the other three cases with the understanding they would be strongly recommending a prison sentence on the first-degree felony.
Peter Stack, Ashley’s defense attorney, also addressed the court, saying he did not disagree with most of what Jaeger had said regarding his client’s criminal history. However, he said, while going through the presentence report, he noticed that many of Ashley’s crimes were directly linked to substance abuse, whether it was marijuana, alcohol or methamphetamine.
Stack added that while the defendant does have some violent incidents, “I don’t think that is the root of the issue – his addiction is.”
Moreover, the defense attorney said, Ashley’s addiction issues had a significant impact on raising the sentencing matrix, which recommended an 84-month prison sentence.
Had this first-degree felony not been a person-to-person crime, Stack said, then the recommendation would have been a jail term followed by probation, which is what the defense attorney was asking the court to do – “even a lengthy jail sentence,” he said.
Stack closed by saying the recommendation of jail time in lieu of prison was not meant to minimize his client’s behavior, adding that Ashley has been very apologetic to not only the court and the officers involved in the incident last year, but also to his family.
It was his family, Stack said, that Ashley wanted to show that he could make a difference and turn his life around.
The defendant declined to comment during the hearing, other than saying he agreed with what his attorney had said during the hearing.
This report is based on statements from court records, police or other responders and may not contain the full scope of findings. Persons arrested or charged are presumed innocent until found guilty in a court of law or as otherwise decided by a trier-of-fact.
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