PHOENIX (Court TV) — Convicted killer Lori Vallow Daybell was dealt several blows in court on Tuesday when a judge ruled against several of her motions.
Lori Daybell appears in court during a motions hearing on March 11, 2025. (Court TV)
Lori was sentenced to life in prison in Idaho for murdering her two youngest children, JJ Vallow and Tylee Ryan, and conspiring to kill her fifth husband’s first wife, Tammy Daybell. Now she’s in Arizona, where she faces charges of murdering her fourth husband, Charles Vallow, and conspiring in an attempt to kill her niece’s ex-husband, Brandon Boudreaux.
The two cases in Arizona are being tried separately, with Lori scheduled to stand trial for Vallow’s murder first. On Tuesday, Lori asked Judge Justin Beresky to ban Court TV’s cameras from the trial, arguing she was suffering from “inherently prejudicial publicity.” Judge Beresky promised to issue an official ruling later but said he was inclined to allow one camera during the trial.
“We want to make sure the camera won’t be zooming in on any level to look at our notes,” Lori told the judge. “They just have the camera on my face the entire trial.”
Judge Beresky said that no zooming in on the counsel tables would be allowed and the cameras would be limited to focusing on the parties involved in the case.
READ MORE | Lori Vallow Daybell tells son that Tylee Ryan killed JJ Vallow
When jury selection begins on March 31, Lori asked for the voir dire of jurors to be done independently rather than in groups. “There’s people who will want to be on this jury just for this purpose,” Lori said, noting, “We went through 1,900 jurors in my last trial.”
Lori, representing herself, failed to convince Judge Beresky to allow statements from Ryan and Lori’s brother, Alex Cox, to be entered as evidence. The judge found that not only were the statements hearsay, but Lori is prohibited from entering statements from a witness whom she was convicted of murdering.
With weeks to go before the trial begins, Lori also asked Judge Beresky to force the prosecution to hand over additional evidence, including conversations with the police and recorded interviews. “I can’t tell them to turn over something they say they don’t have,” Beresky said, but told the prosecution to look into finding the materials that Lori said exist. The two-hour police interview, which features Lori, Ryan and Cox in the hours after Vallow was killed, features all three saying that Cox acted in self-defense when he shot his brother-in-law.
Lori took an opportunity in court to remind Judge Beresky that time is running out for her second trial, with May 11 as the last date under speedy trial law. However, Judge Beresky said he would waive the time over her objection, citing an inability on both sides to try two cases at once.
Both sides are due back in court on March 18 to address final issues, including a potential defense expert on digital forensics.
