Judge adds extra stipulation after sending Chubbuck man on rider for ‘repugnant’ acts
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POCATELLO — After first saying he did not plan to be bound by a plea deal, a District Judge reconsidered and ordered a man to serve a rider.
Kyler-Orion Rory Loseth, 18, reached a plea deal with the Bannock County Prosecutor’s Office which saw two counts of rape amended to two counts of felony aggravated battery, to which he pleaded guilty.
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At the onset of a sentencing hearing Friday, District Judge Cody Brower informed Loseth that he had concerns about the binding agreement and its rider sentence. But, after a sidebar during which defense and prosecution attorneys explained the reasoning for the agreement, he did agree to the recommended sentence.
However, the judge explained to Loseth that, regardless of his involvement level in the treatment programs during the rider, Brower would not release him to probation until he is satisfied in Loseth’s growth.
The rider comes with an underlying prison sentence of 10 to 15 years.
A rider program is where a judge sends a person to prison for up to a year to undergo different treatment programs. When the inmate has completed the program, the judge can then decide to send them back to prison for their sentence or release them on probation.
Loseth was arrested in April 2023, when he was 17, for a pair of sexual attacks on minors — the younger of whom being 13 at the time of the attack. He was charged as an adult.
Both victims had statements read into the record during Friday’s hearing.
The first was present to speak in court. The second provided a written statement, which was read in court by Bannock County Victim Witness Coordinator Tamela Manhart.
The first victim described the summer of 2021, when she was held down and forcibly raped by Loseth. She said that his manipulation began immediately after the attack, when Loseth called her parents and told them she would likely accuse him of rape.
When she told her parent, the victim said in court, they did not believe her.
“I was very uncomfortable,” she said of her feelings following the attack, which she described as the “most degrading and painful feeling” she has experienced in her life. “I felt very gross and worthless.”
She said she was quickly consumed by “trauma, pain and heartache.”
The slight reprieve she experienced when her claims were finally taken seriously and Loseth was arrested, quickly vanished when, earlier this year, Loseth was released from jail after reporting difficulties in dealing with jail lifestyle.
Following Loseth’s release, the victim said, she found herself “freezing up” regularly in fear that Loseth would find her and harm her.
That fear came from more than the attack she had already endured. She learned that, while Loseth was in jail, he wrote what prosecuting attorney Erin Tognetti said he called an “amends list.”
The list included names of females Loseth had allegedly been involved with sexually. Next to the names of the two victims was the word “die.”
Even being escorted in and out of school by Pocatello police officers, and having officers regularly patrol her neighborhood, offered little relief.
“Kyler has physically and mentally destroyed me in numerous aspects,” she said.
The second victim described similar circumstances — beginning with people refusing to believe her allegations, then the discovery of her name with the word “die.”
“My body feels used and disgusting. Every time someone raises their arm, I flinch,” her statement said. “… It wasn’t fair, I didn’t deserve it. … I will always be a victim.”
Speaking on his own behalf, Loseth offered little in the way of atonement. Instead, he spoke about how he misrepresented himself during a pre-sentence investigation and how his sarcastic answers regarding his selling of drugs, using other people’s credit cards without permission and hacking cryptocurrency accounts were taken literally.
“Older people usually don’t understand sarcasm,” he said of the investigators and analysts.
He asked Brower to be placed on probation, saying, “I know I can succeed on probation because I’ve succeeded before.”
Defense attorney J. Scott Andrew echoed that request, describing Loseth as an immature young man who experienced an “absolute mess” of a childhood.
“He needs to get the treatment, and he needs to understand that he needs to take that seriously,” Andrew said, adding that Loseth needs to undergo “reprogramming.”
Tognetti disagreed with Andrew’s assessment that Loseth was just hormonal yet aggressive youth.
Pointing to the assessments of the experts involved in Loseth’s pre-sentence investigation, the prosecutor described instead a a “young person with a danger(ous) disregard for other people.”
“He believes that he’s smarter than everybody, that he can manipulate everybody,” she said. “…(To Loseth), people are just toys.”
Following his release from jail, Tognetti said she was made aware of roughly 30 write-ups Loseth received from Bannock County Jail staff. During his year at the jail, Loseth was allegedly involved in fights, made jailhouse wine and got in trouble for passing items between cells.
Eventually, he was moved into segregation.
“He’s almost bragging about it,” she said of Loseth openly discussing these transgression with investigators. “… He can’t follow the rules even when he’s incarcerated, which does not bode well.”
According to the investigation, which listed Loseth as a moderate to high risk to reoffend, he “behaves defiantly” and is “egocentric.”
Furthermore, she added, he has a “very troubling” history of contact with girls, finding sexual arousal in a person attempting to fight him off — saying he enjoys this as a role-playing act.
Tognetti said she hopes a sentence and quick resolution will help the still underage victims move past their attacks.
After listening to the victims, both attorneys and Loseth speak, Brower spoke passionately and at length.
“Obviously, I have a lot of thoughts on this case,” he said. “… It’s hard to hear two young ladies say that they were not believed. It’s hard to hear them say the things that they have gone through.”
Brower said, bluntly, that Loseth, had he been an adult at the time of the crimes, he would go “straight to prison.”
But, he took into account Loseth’s troubled childhood and the fact that he is a teen with an underdeveloped brain.
Brower spoke about Loseth’s claim that the “older people” assessing him did not understand his sarcasm, saying that “older people understand that sarcasm is seeded in some truth.
“And not once has this court heard you state any remorse — any concern for these young ladies,” the judge continued.
“It’s not the two girls in this case that need to change. It’s not society, it’s not your mother, your grandmother,” Brower said. “… You are in need of treatment. You are in need of change in your thought processes.”
To help him with the treatment, and redirect him toward being a productive member of society, Brower ordered Loseth to serve a rider with an underlying 10- to 15-year prison sentence — one such sentence for each crime to be served concurrently.
But, Brower explained, in one year, when Loseth returns for his rider review, Brower will not just consider Loseth’s effort in completing the assigned programs, he will also consider his growth as a person.
The judge went on to explain that if he does not see noticeable growth in maturity and ability to accept his own faults, Brower will impose the prison sentence he said Loseth “earned” with his “repugnant” acts.
If Brower does see that growth in one year, he said, Loseth will then be a viable candidate for probation.
Additionally, Loseth was fined $300 and ordered to pay court costs plus the $100 cost of DNA collection. No-contact orders barring Loseth from any contact with the victims were extended for 15 years.