Heartless: Shot And Killed In Utah

The Utah Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions of a hunter and his guide for the killing of a mule deer in Utah, rejecting contentions of ineffective assistance of counsel based, in part, arising from the failure to preserve the deer’s heart

A hunter, Alan Hamberlin, and a guide, Ryan Scott Hatch, claimed to have shot a mule deer in Arizona—where they had a tag to hunt—that later wandered into Utah. The duo said they tracked the wounded deer to the spot where it died, field dressed it, and then carried its parts back to Arizona. However, a different hunting party reported to authorities that the deer was actually shot in Utah. Wildlife authorities conducted an investigation, which produced significant evidence supporting that the deer was, in fact, shot in Utah. Hatch was thereafter charged with and convicted of assisting in wanton destruction of protected wildlife.

On appeal, he asserts several claims of ineffective assistance of counsel. We reject his claims and affirm his conviction.

From the opinion involving the guide

Hamberlin had a mule deer tag for Arizona’s unit 12B near the Utah border and set out to hunt with Hatch and other acquaintances. Hamberlin claimed to have shot a deer in Arizona, south of the Utah border. He said that the wounded deer then moved northward into Utah, which made him feel obligated to pursue it. Ultimately, Hamberlin and Hatch located the deer where it had collapsed and died, and they proceeded to field dress it.

Another group hunting in unit 12B used scopes to track a deer several miles into Utah. Lacking Utah hunting tags, they didn’t pursue it and observed it “bed down” in Utah. A few hours later, some members of this group heard a single gunshot from the north. Approximately five to fifteen minutes after the shot, this group saw Hamberlin and Hatch near the spot in Utah where the deer had bedded down. They then observed Hamberlin and Hatch field dress the deer. One of the group’s members called a tipline to report Hamberlin and Hatch to wildlife authorities, providing GPS readings for a possible location of the deer.

Field dressing

Field dressing refers to the process of removing the internal organs at the site of the kill to preserve the meat and other valuable parts of the animal. See Center for Biological Diversity v. United States Forest Service, 80 F.4th 943, 947 (9th Cir. 2023)

Conclusion

All of Hatch’s claims of ineffective assistance of counsel fail. There was no basis to assert a due process claim based on the destruction of the deer’s heart because that evidence has not been shown to be exculpatory. Counsel also reasonably declined to move for a continuance to avoid turning the trial into a battle of the experts. Moreover, Hatch has not demonstrated that testimony from his proffered rebuttal expert would have been reasonably likely to change the outcome. And the evidence about crossing the border without notifying state officials was properly admitted, lending no support to a claim of ineffective assistance. Accordingly, Hatch’s conviction is affirmed.

The hunter’s appeal similarly did not succeed

A hunter, aided by a guide, claimed to have shot a mule deer in Arizona near the border with Utah, in an area for which he had drawn a tag to hunt. The hunter and guide purportedly pursued the wounded animal into Utah until it succumbed to its injuries and died, at which point they field dressed it and carried certain portions back to Arizona, where an acquaintance picked them up. But another hunting party saw things differently and reported to authorities that the deer had been illegally shot in Utah. An investigation produced significant evidence that the deer had, in fact, been shot in Utah. A jury convicted the hunter of wanton destruction of protected wildlife. On appeal, the hunter, Alan Dudley Hamberlin, raises several claims of ineffective assistance of counsel. His claims are not availing, and we affirm.

Shot in Utah

there was abundant physical evidence that the deer was in Utah when it was shot, was shot from a point in Utah, and died in Utah. Investigators pinpointed where the deer was located when it was shot. From this location, they determined the path it took to the spot where it died. Moreover, they identified the location from where the shot was likely taken. And perhaps most telling, all the deer’s tracks were found entirely in Utah. For Hamberlin’s account to have been believable to the jury, there would have to be some evidence of deer tracks leading from Arizona into Utah. But none were found—in spite of the fact that they would likely have been readily visible along with the tracks that were found in Utah. Hamberlin has not assailed or undercut the evidentiary picture these facts established.

The heart of the matter

Hamberlin’s proposed expert also stated that had the heart been preserved, tests could have been performed to determine how long the deer lived after it had received the wound to the heart. Specifically, he stated that testing could determine “whether a wound was inflicted less than 5 minutes, 5–15 minutes, or 15 minutes to several hours before death.” (Quoting an unidentified medical or forensic journal.) The veterinarian then asserted that such testing on the heart would have “disproven the prosecution’s assertions” that “the deer died in ten seconds” after being shot and would have shown the members of Dieringer’s group “were lying.”

The problem with the veterinarian’s claims is that the prosecution never asserted that the deer died within ten seconds after being shot. Rather, insofar as our reading of the record indicates, Officer Stout testified that the deer ran for “a matter of seconds” after being shot. Specifically, the prosecutor argued that the deer got shot, jumped up, ran 117 yards, and then died. From this, it appears that Hamberlin’s proposed expert calculated that this “would [have taken] approximately ten seconds to transpire” and stated that the prosecution represented that the deer died ten seconds after being shot. But this is not what the State argued—it argued the deer ran 117 yards to the spot where it eventually died, not that the deer dropped dead after ten seconds. What the veterinarian suggests is nothing more than a straw-man argument constructed to defeat an imagined assertion falsely attributed to the prosecution. As such, it does not meet the threshold of establishing reasonable probability that the heart would have been exculpatory. Put more bluntly, the veterinarian’s opinion about how lost evidence could defeat a phantom argument simply is of no help to Hamberlin. Rather, it is “only speculation as to what forensic evidence might have been found.” Mendoza, 2025 UT App 46, ¶ 20 (cleaned up). It certainly “does not rise to the level of reasonable probability,” which is required to establish that lost or destroyed evidence “would have been exculpatory.”

Conclusion

Hamberlin has not demonstrated that he received ineffective assistance when Counsel did not hire an additional expert, did not move for a continuance, and did not allege a due process violation. Accordingly, his conviction is affirmed.

(Mike Frisch)