Background
On July 9, 2021, Michael Curwick held an acquaintance captive in his Summit County apartment for several hours, striking her with a book and a large metal flashlight, sawing off chunks of her hair with scissors, and threatening repeatedly to kill her and her family members, whose names and addresses he forced her to write down. A jury convicted him of aggravated kidnapping, among other offenses.
After sentencing, the State sought restitution for the victim, the victim’s mother (Mother), and the Utah Office for Victims of Crime (UOVC). The restitution request included $7,259.34 in lost wages for Mother, some of which UOVC had already reimbursed. Under Utah’s Crime Victims Restitution Act, a parent of a crime victim qualifies as a “victim” for restitution purposes. Utah Code § 77-38b-102(27)(b)(iv). The State presented three categories of evidence at the restitution hearing: (1) a form from Mother’s health care provider diagnosing her with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) “result[ing] from” the criminal incident and estimating she would be unable to work from July 9 through September 30, 2021; (2) UOVC claim forms that Mother had filled out herself, describing how Curwick’s crime affected her ability to work, including that “on court days I am too overwhelmed to think and I cry all day”; and (3) a sworn declaration from a UOVC restitution specialist detailing the verification steps UOVC had taken, including obtaining confirmation from Mother’s mental health provider that she was unable to work due to crime-related PTSD and from court employees that Mother had attended hearings. The district court found proximate cause proved and ordered restitution including Mother’s lost wages. Curwick appealed, arguing causation was not established.
The Court’s Holding
The Utah Court of Appeals (Judge Oliver, joined by Judges Orme and Mortensen) affirmed the restitution order. Under the Crime Victims Restitution Act, restitution is owed for “pecuniary damages . . . proximately caused . . . by the criminal conduct of the defendant.” Utah Code § 77-38b-205(1)(a). Proximate cause requires both but-for causation and foreseeable harm; Curwick challenged only but-for causation. The burden rests on the State.
The court evaluated each of the State’s three categories of evidence and rejected Curwick’s challenges in turn. The medical form was direct evidence: Mother’s provider noted a history of “well-controlled anxiety and depression” but specified that her PTSD diagnosis “result[ed] from” the criminal incident. Mother’s written claim forms described the nexus in her own words. Curwick argued these statements were an inadequate substitute for sworn testimony, but the court explained that evidentiary weight is for the district court; the statements still provided evidence of causation.
The most significant issue was the UOVC restitution specialist’s sworn declaration. Curwick argued that relying on it violated State v. Blake, 2022 UT App 104, which held that a restitution order based “almost exclusively” on UOVC’s judgment of “crime-relatedness” improperly delegates causation to UOVC rather than requiring the court to make its own independent determination. The court drew a careful distinction: Blake forbids substituting UOVC’s ultimate conclusion for the court’s own analysis, but it does not bar reliance on specific factual evidence that UOVC gathered or verified. Following State v. Murray, 2023 UT App 52, 530 P.3d 982, the court explained that a UOVC declaration containing specific details—such as direct confirmation from a named mental health provider that a condition “result[ed] from” the crime—supplies facts on which the court can make its own independent causation finding, rather than merely trusting UOVC’s bottom-line determination. The three categories of evidence, “[t]aken together,” were sufficient under the preponderance standard. The court affirmed.
Key Takeaways
- A medical form specifically attributing a family member’s PTSD diagnosis to the criminal incident is direct evidence of proximate causation for restitution purposes—it does not merely establish that the family member has mental health history.
- State v. Blake does not categorically exclude UOVC declarations from restitution hearings. The prohibition is on treating UOVC’s general “crime-related” determination as a sufficient proxy for causation. Evidence of the specific steps UOVC took—contacting providers, reviewing police reports, confirming court attendance—may be considered as part of the court’s own independent analysis.
- A parent who suffers PTSD and misses work because of an aggravated kidnapping of their child satisfies the “victim” definition under Utah Code § 77-38b-102(27)(b)(iv) and may recover lost wages as restitution.
- The combination of medical documentation, a victim-relative’s own written statements, and UOVC verification evidence can together meet the State’s burden of proving proximate cause for restitution without requiring live testimony from the claiming family member.
Why It Matters
Curwick clarifies the boundary between permissible and impermissible use of UOVC evidence in Utah restitution proceedings. The rule from Blake—that courts cannot simply defer to UOVC’s “crime-relatedness” finding—remains intact. But Curwick confirms that UOVC documentation plays a meaningful evidentiary role when it contains specific, independently verifiable details: provider confirmations, employer records, and court-attendance verifications. This matters because UOVC involvement is common in serious felony cases, and prosecutors often lack live witnesses beyond the victim or their family to prove the causal chain for collateral losses.
For defense counsel, Curwick signals that challenging restitution awards to victim family members on proximate cause grounds will face a high bar when medical documentation directly links the crime to the diagnosis and UOVC conducted genuine verification steps. Challenges are more likely to succeed—as in Blake—when the State relies solely on UOVC’s bare conclusion of crime-relatedness with no underlying documentation of how that determination was reached.