Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes
- Jonathan Jareth Soberanis, accused of numerous sexual crimes against children, faces competency hearings in federal court.
- Soberanis' legal history includes multiple incidents of alleged sexual misconduct involving children, with charges often dismissed due to incompetency findings.
- Prosecutors say the case highlights broader issues with the high rate of negative conclusions in competency evaluations in Utah.
SALT LAKE CITY — Despite being accused of numerous sexual crimes against children over a decade, 30-year-old Jonathan Jareth Soberanis has been found not competent to proceed in all but one state case, and charges against him have been dismissed.
Once he is released, police say he keeps committing similar crimes and a pattern is repeated of him being charged, found incompetent, then released.
That may change. Soberanis appeared in federal court for competency hearings Thursday and Friday on charges of distribution and transportation of child sexual abuse material, as a string of experts testified as to whether he is competent to stand trial.
Various medical evaluators over the time frame in question have made formal and informal diagnoses, including neurodevelopment disorder, fetal alcohol spectrum syndrome, dissociative identity disorder, autism, and serious childhood trauma.
Thursday appeared to be the first time forensic psychologists came to the conclusion Soberanis was competent, a claim hotly debated by an evaluator hired by the defense.
The Supreme Court, in 1960, established what is now called the Dusky Standard, requiring parties to have "sufficient present ability to consult with his lawyer with a reasonable degree of rational understanding — and whether he has a rational as well as factual understanding of the proceedings against him."
Friday, clinical and forensic psychologist, Dr. Jolie Brams, hired by the defense to evaluate Soberanis, said she had "grave concerns" about the competency of the man. He wore his dark hair in a top bun in the morning, down in a curly ponytail after lunch, dressed in grey and white stripes from Davis County Jail.
Brams said Soberanis was "basically unable to understand the complexities of the court system," had an "infantile nature," and "understood he was in trouble" only in a "very simplistic" way.
She said past sexual and physical abuse as a child encouraged the development of dissociative identity disorder. "His coping is to rely on these shattered parts of his identity," she said, which leaves frequent and significant gaps in short-term and working memory. "Life is really a struggle for him."
But the psychologists from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, commissioned independently by the court to assess the question, found he was competent, given he be provided a number of accommodations for his mental disabilities, like frequent breaks and repetitious explanations.
When asked if the accommodations would be sufficient to remedy the competency issue, Brams was adamant: "No, absolutely not."
The charges themselves allege he used multiple social media profiles and apps, the dark web, and encrypted cloud storage to host his illicit photos and videos, which the Federal Bureau of Prisons psychologists say demonstrates a moderate level of executive functioning.
His work history also supported that assertion, they said, after an undercover officer testified she interacted with the man selling gems at a kiosk in a mall, finding he was able to operate effectively in the store, recite information about the products, and make change for a large bill.
On Friday, Dr. Jessica Micono with the bureau testified she believed Brams and others had been inadvertently elevating the standards set by Dusky, and allowed emotions to inform the reports. She stood behind the report of her junior, Dr. Rebecca Johnson, though Brams testified she was concerned about "cherry picking" from an "inexperienced evaluator."
Hollan, who is prosecuting the federal case, sees the Soberanis situation as indicative of a problem statewide. In court documents he argues that nationally, 20% of defendants are found not competent, compared to 70% for Utah evaluators. "This is not a failure of the law, but of evaluators who allow bias toward treatment affect their determination of competency," he wrote.
The defense and prosecutor will submit briefs to the court in the coming month, before orally arguing their positions on competency. U.S. District Judge David Barlow will then rule on the competency issue at hand, which if favorable to the prosecution, may allow past charges to be reopened.
Soberanis' history in court
In 2015, Soberanis was permanently banned from a Utah County recreation center, exposing himself sexually to others in the locker room, court documents show. He pleaded no contest to one count of lewdness in June 2014, and received 11 months of probation.
He had "contact" with law enforcement in October 2015, September 2016, and December 2016, prosecutors wrote in a 2023 court filing.
In May 2018, witnesses say he exposed himself to a child at the South Towne Mall in Sandy. The child's mother took pictures of Soberanis, before he "knocked the phone out of her hand and pushed her down," according to the initial police booking affidavit. The photos were released to local media, and multiple tipsters reached out to identify Soberanis, the affidavit says.
He was charged with a number of misdemeanors for the alleged incident, was found not competent in June 2019, released from Salt Lake County Jail, and charges were dismissed.
In December 2018, Soberanis crawled under a dressing room stall at the same Utah County recreation center he was previously banned from, to watch an 8-year-old boy undress, before exposing himself to the child, charging documents allege. After being found not competent in June 2019, those charges and charges from another case were dismissed.
In May 2021, the man broke into a house and lied to police about his identity, according to charges. The next month he was charged with touching a 5-year-old boy at the same recreation center he was banned from in 2015, court documents say, exposing himself to the child who crawled under the stall door to escape. After being confronted, he allegedly assaulted two officers.
The charges in those case were dismissed in July and August 2021, after he was found not competent.
He was put in the custody of the Department of Services for People with Disabilities in August 2021, and was supposed to be on 24-hour watch.
In January 2022, however, Soberanis was charged with multiple voyeurism misdemeanors after police say he was peeking into neighbors' bedrooms wearing a robe, mask and beanie, the police booking affidavit says. Following those charges, "law enforcement discovered approximately 30 gigabytes of (child sexual abuse material), comprised of thousands of images and videos," on Soberanis' devices, court documents state.
He was found not competent in November 2022 and the charges were dismissed in March 2023. Soberanis has been in federal custody in the Davis County Jail since then.
