Court of Appeals hears claims that state destroyed key dating‑profile photo and that defendant invoked right to counsel in State v. Kyum

The Utah Court of Appeals heard oral argument in State v. Kyum on claims that the prosecution destroyed a potentially exculpatory dating‑profile photo, that the defendant invoked his right to counsel after receiving Miranda warnings, and that trial counsel performed ineffectively.

The defendant’s attorney, Natalie Scabine, told the three‑judge panel that the case turned on what the defendant saw in an online dating profile before traveling to meet a person he now says was an adult model. "The state destroyed the profile it used to attract mister Khayyam," Scabine said, and that lost profile photo was the only image the defendant had seen "at the time he solicited the woman in that photograph." Scabine argued the missing profile could have been exculpatory because later photos in the record show an adult who did not look 13, which she said would undercut the prosecution’s theory that…