In Brief
A man convicted of rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl received the death sentence. The Supreme Court reopened his review petition and examined whether the sentence should stand. The Court found that while the crime was heinous and abhorrent, the death sentence was imposed without a proper hearing on sentencing factors, the conviction rested on circumstantial evidence without DNA testing, and the convict was denied effective legal representation. The Court commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment without remission, holding that the crime did not meet the 'rarest of rare' threshold required for capital punishment, and that procedural fairness had been denied at sentencing.
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