AI-generated summary. We recommend consulting the bill text for important decisions.

Utah law requires law enforcement agencies to hold onto physical evidence from criminal cases for set periods of time, and this bill updates those rules in several ways. For misdemeanor cases, it removes the previous process where prosecutors had to notify defendants directly and allow them to object, and replaces it with a system where agencies notify the prosecuting attorney, the incarcerated individual, their attorney, and the prosecuting office — and any of those parties can object within 60 days. For felony cases, the bill narrows the "custody-based" retention rule so that evidence must be kept for the length of someone's incarceration only when the conviction involves a specific serious offense (such as murder, rape, kidnapping, or robbery) rather than any felony conviction. It also adds two new grounds for extending felony evidence retention: while a federal habeas corpus petition (a legal challenge to imprisonment in federal court) is pending, and extends the existing postconviction petition protection to explicitly reference the Utah Postconviction Remedies Act.