ST. GEORGE — A vacancy sign is needed for the courthouse on Tabernacle Street.
Judge G. Michael Westfall is retiring as the presiding judge of the 5th District Court as of Aug. 31. The retirement comes a little over 20 years to the day Westfall first took the Southern Utah bench in 2003.
He mainly served in Beaver and Iron counties after he was appointed to serve as a judge of the 5th District Court by Gov. Michael O. Leavitt in 2003. He transferred to Washington County in 2014 to fill the vacancy left by the retirement of Judge James Shumate.
During that time, noteworthy cases he has presided over include the conviction of Brandon Perry Smith in a 2010 double-murder; the 2018 One and Only bar murder; granting a motion in 2019 to allow Warren Jeffs to be deposed in a sexual abuse case; a 2019 aggravated robbery; a 2021 case where a man was cleared of wrongdoing after two juveniles said they were attacked on their bikes with a pickup in Little Valley.
Westfall was also a multiple winner of the Judicial Excellence Award from the Utah State Bar.
A nominating committee has selected five candidates to fill the Fifth District vacancy. Among them is the prosecutor in last year’s Smithfield Circle Four Farms trial, the deputy attorney for Washington County and a professor at Utah Tech.
Gov. Spencer Cox will ultimately choose the candidate to fill the vacancy in July after a public comment period.
In alphabetical order, the five candidates for 5th District judge are:
- Ryan Christiansen, attorney/section director of the Utah Attorney General’s Office in Southern Utah. The 2002 graduate of BYU Law School joined the state attorney’s office in 2019.
- Von Christiansen, Beaver County Attorney. The alum of what was then Dixie State University earned his law degree from BYU in 1998 and was the lead prosecutor in the October case where two men were cleared of burglary after taking two piglets at a Milford food production facility.
- Eric Gentry, deputy Washington County attorney. Graduated from BYU Law School in 2002. Was the lead prosecutor when an Ivins man was convicted in 2022 of murdering his wife and sentenced to life in prison.
- Susan Hunt, criminal justice instructor at Utah Tech University. The 1993 graduate of the BYU Law School started as a deputy district attorney in Salt Lake County and the deputy attorney for Davis County until 2021. Hunt joined the faculty of Utah Tech last year.
- Nicholas Mills, Kaysville City attorney. Mills has been the lead attorney for Kaysville since 2017 after being an assistant city prosecutor in Layton and Salt Lake City. The alum of Weber State and Lamar University went to law school at the University of Utah.
The public can send written comments to the Fifth District Judicial Nominating Commission at [email protected] or Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice, P.O. Box 142330, Salt Lake City, UT 84114-2330. The deadline for written comments is noon on June 9.
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