Jeremy Best’s lawyers want him moved to the Madison County jail. Here’s why.
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IDAHO FALLS – Defense attorneys for a man accused of murdering his wife and child have filed a motion to move him out of the Bonneville County Jail, after they say his constitutional rights have been violated.
Jeremy Best, 48, was indicted by a grand jury in Teton County on Dec. 18, 2023, for three counts of murder in the first degree and three enhancements for the use of a firearm or other deadly weapon during the commission of a crime. He is accused of killing his wife, Kali Randall, her unborn baby, and their 10-month-old son, Zeke Best.
Best is now facing the death penalty, with a jury trial scheduled for Sept. 15.
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Best’s defense attorney, Jim Archibald, filed a motion on Dec. 30 arguing that Best’s constitutional rights are being violated in the Bonneville County Jail, and that he should be moved to the Madison County Jail in Rexburg.
According to the motion, Archibald argues that the jail has violated Best’s constitutional rights with “obstructions to expert examinations, and testing necessary to prepare a constitutionally adequate defense in a death penalty case, delayed and misleadingly incomplete discovery regarding Mr. Best’s confinement that has impeded the defense team’s preparation, and concerning communications that suggest a concerted effort to deprive Mr. Best of a meaningful ability to prepare his defenses in this case.”
Best was arrested and booked into the Bonneville County Jail on Dec. 2, 2023, meaning he has been in jail for over 400 days.
Archibald states that his team filed their first motion to transfer on May 28, 2024, after an issue with others potentially hearing their private attorney-client conversations.
“Due to the positioning of where the attorneys must sit now in the Bonneville County Jail while talking to clients, a member of the public can easily hear the statements of the lawyers as they talk to their clients,” writes Archibald in the motion. “A bench for the public to sit on is placed less than five feet from the room where the attorneys talk to their clients.”
Archibald also argued that the Bonneville County Jail was not providing a “conducive” space for the defense team to meet with specialized experts for examinations and testing, and that they hadn’t received their requests for Best’s medical records under HIPAA from the jail.
In response to this first motion, the court suggested that Archibald and his team work with the jail to rectify the issues. According to Archibald, they still haven’t been fixed.
However, according to the jail, they have rectified the issue and continue to improve the jail for attorney-client privileges.
“As far as the issues that have been pointed out and brought up in the motions, we’ve addressed those and made accommodations and changes where we could,” says Bonneville County Sheriff’s spokesman Bryan Lovell.
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On Friday, the Bonneville County Jail opened a new section of the jail, the Special Handling facility, for inmates with special medical and mental needs, as well as those who have developmental disabilities or who are suicidal and a danger to themselves or others.
Lovell says the facility is not near any public areas and will also soon be available for attorney-client meetings.
Also in the motion, Archibald claims that an employee with the Bonneville County Prosecutor’s office emailed an employee at the Bonneville County Jail, asking if he could pick up evidence “on a weekly basis” even though the Bonneville County Prosecutors are not a party in the case.
Archibald writes in the motion that the Prosecutor’s Office employee reportedly stated, “We really want to convict this guy and not give him any type of defense.”
The defense also claims that after requesting Best’s jail and medical records from the jail, they only received certain parts of the request and “in an incomplete and misleading manner.”
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Archibald claims that they requested the same information from the Teton County Prosecutor’s office, where they received “more complete jail records regarding Mr. Best.”
“It became apparent that the jail had provided substantially incomplete records that were not only non-responsive to (the defense’s) request, but that were actively misleading in that they included only non-exculpatory information and omitted all exculpatory evidence.”
Exculpatory evidence is any evidence that helps to prove a defendant’s innocence.
Archibald writes that in the days after Best’s arrest, he displayed behavior indicative of a mental health crisis, including being “awake through the night and that he was naked at various points,” as well as refusing meals.
The defense says none of the information given to them from the Bonneville County Jail included these details.
Best is expected to appear for a sealed court hearing on Jan. 16 to discuss the motion.