Monday was the beginning of the trial for Chad Guy Daybell. He is on trial for the 2019 murders of Lori Vallow Daybell's children, Joshua Vallow and Tylee Ryan as well as the death of Tammy Daybell, his late wife.
Chad Daybell married Lori Vallow in Hawaii just shy of three weeks following Tammy's passing. Then, seven months later, on June 9, 2020, authorities discovered the buried remains of JJ and Tylee in his backyard, leading to his subsequent arrest.
His trial comes a year after the trial of Lori Vallow. She was found guilty by a jury on all charges and was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
The similarities between the two cases include evidence, the prosecution witness lists, and the accusations. However, Mr. Daybell's case carries the threat of the death penalty.
A death sentence was not possible in the case of Lori Vallow Daybell.
Jury selection is expected to last two weeks as opposed to the one week it took to seat a jury in the Lori Vallow Daybell trial.
Another challenge for the court is finding potential jurors who do not have preconceived notions about the case.
"You have to have jurors who are willing to follow the law as it relates to the death penalty," KSL-TV legal analyst Greg Skordas said. "You can't have a juror who doesn't believe in the death penalty."
The case has been in the public eye in the Boise, Idaho metropolitan area for nearly five years.
"They might think, 'Hey if she was guilty, why isn't he?'" Skordas said. "So you've got to get jurors who are going to agree and swear that they will decide his guilt or innocence solely on the evidence in his trial and not based on anything that happened to his wife."
Skordas said that prosecutors will likely spend more time presenting their case than they did in Lori Vallow Daybell's trial, and more thoroughly, as they aim for the death penalty, especially with Daybell facing the extra first-degree murder charge for Tammy Daybell.
Vallow Daybell was not charged with her murder but was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder in Tammy Daybell's death.
"In a death penalty case, a capital case, they could just leave no stone unturned. And they've got to show the jury everything they've got," Skordas said.
"There are multiple murder counts here. So they want to prove those counts because that's an aggravating factor that's more likely to make the jury want to think that (the) death penalty is the appropriate remedy here."
It is estimated that Chad Daybell's trial will be between eight and 12 weeks long compared to the five-week trial of Lori Vallow Daybell.
Daybell is facing three counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder, and two counts of insurance fraud.
