POCATELLO — Former Downard Funeral Home owner Lance Peck officially pleaded guilty to several felony charges for his alleged mishandling of the business where he misrepresented remains to at least 25 families and a dozen bodies in various states of decomposition were found in September 2021.
Appearing in front of 6th District Judge Javier Gabiola at the Bannock County Courthouse Thursday afternoon and wearing an oxygen tank on his back with tubes leading up to his face, Peck pleaded guilty to one count each of income tax evasion, perjury, offering a false or forged instrument for records, fraud by computer, grand theft by deception and furnishing false information that affects an Idaho Vital Statistics record. Peck also pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of violating the Idaho Mortician’s Code of Conduct.
“Things began to go bad for me when I decided to buy Downard Funeral Home,” Peck said in court as he entered guilty pleas to the six felony charges. “In the beginning, I felt I was able to manage the funeral director’s aspect of my job but I was always overwhelmed by financial and regulatory aspects of my work.”
Peck began to talk about how the COVID-19 pandemic further affected his ability to effectively manage the funeral home he had been operating for several years when Bannock County Chief Deputy Prosecutor Jonathan Radford objected on the grounds that Peck’s statement was too broad and was more acceptable to be part of his testimony during sentencing.
Peck provided the court with a list of the medications he is currently taking for several diagnosed mental health conditions, including anxiety, depression, suicidal ideology and dependent personality disorder.
Over a dozen family members of the deceased who trusted Peck to provide funeral and cremation services were in the courtroom as Peck pleaded guilty to the six felony and single misdemeanor charges.
In accepting the guilty pleas, the remaining 16 felony and over 60 misdemeanor charges filed against Peck for his alleged mishandling of the now destroyed Downard Funeral Home were dismissed pursuant to the terms of a plea agreement Peck reached with Bannock County prosecutors last month.
Additionally, the plea agreement states that Peck cannot object to any victim impact statements related to any of the dismissed charges and that prosecutors will not present any victim impact statements from anybody that was not associated with the criminal charges filed against Peck.
The plea agreement also states Peck cannot object to reasonable restitution.
Moreover, the plea agreement requires the prosecutor’s office to limit the time it requests Peck spend in prison and demands Gabiola to impose a sentence no higher than the recommendation.
The plea agreement calls for prosecutors to recommend a unified prison term of 10 years of which only three years would be mandatory on four of the felony charges and a unified prison term of five years of which only three years would be mandatory on two of the felony charges. All of the prison terms would run concurrently, or at the same time.
This essentially means that Peck would likely only serve three years behind bars for his alleged mishandling of dozens of funeral and cremation services while operating Downward Funeral Home, which was demolished in 2023 and is now a parking lot for Pocatello High School students.
Alternatively, Gabiola could refuse to accept the plea agreement at sentencing at which point Bannock County prosecutors and Peck’s Pocatello attorney, Richard Blok, could enter into a subsequent mediation process or Peck could elect to take his case to trial.
Blok and Bannock County prosecutors declined to comment on the case at the conclusion of the hearing on Thursday.
Peck, who’s been out of jail since bonding out soon after his 2022 arrest, will be back in court for a sentencing hearing on Sept. 11.