Utah prosecutors decline charges in Taylor Frankie Paul, Dakota Mortensen cases

Salt Lake County prosecutors declined to charge Dakota Mortensen after finding that some allegations were too old under Utah’s misdemeanor time limit and that the remaining claims did not meet the standard needed to file criminal charges beyond a reasonable doubt. The decision underscores the gap between public accusations, police investigations and what prosecutors can actually prove in court, even when the people involved are among Utah’s best-known online personalities.

The Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office also declined to file charges in two domestic-violence investigations involving Taylor Frankie Paul and Mortensen, whose disputes have drawn scrutiny from Draper and West Jordan police. Prosecutors said the allegations under review stretched back to 2024 and to February 2026, but some incidents were more than three years old, placing them outside Utah’s two-year statute of limitations for misdemeanors. The remaining allegations, prosecutors said, lacked sufficient evidence to support criminal charges.

The cases were reviewed by multiple attorneys because of Paul’s high-profile status. That extra scrutiny came as the legal fight between Paul and Mortensen played out in public, with each filing protective-order petitions against the other. A court commissioner has already ordered that Paul’s visits with her 2-year-old son, Ever, be supervised. A full hearing on the protective-order issues is scheduled for April 30, 2026.

The criminal review has also carried immediate professional consequences. ABC canceled Paul’s upcoming season of The Bachelorette after video from a prior 2023 domestic-violence incident surfaced, and production of Season 5 of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives was paused after the February 2026 investigation became public. That makes the criminal no-charge decision part of a larger reckoning for Paul, whose celebrity has turned private conflict into a national story.

Paul’s earlier case began in 2023, when she was arrested after a chair-throwing incident involving Mortensen. She later pleaded guilty in abeyance to aggravated assault and has been on probation since. In the latest dispute, Paul’s legal team argued Mortensen was the aggressor in at least one February fight, which they described in court as the truck tussle, while Mortensen alleged Paul threw a drink at him.

After prosecutors declined charges, Paul said on Instagram that she cried when she got the call and thanked supporters. For now, the criminal cases are closed, but the protective-order fight and its fallout are still moving through Utah’s courts.