Arizona woman sentenced to death in murder of cousin
Girl, 10, suffocated when locked in a footlocker overnight
In the end, jurors felt they had no choice but to sentence Sammantha Allen to death for the brutal 2011 murder of her 10-year-old cousin, Ame Deal.
The Phoenix woman had been on trial in Maricopa County Superior Court since May. She was one of four family members charged with disciplining the girl by forcing her to exercise in sweltering July heat and then locking her in a 31-inchlong footlocker overnight.
That box was padlocked shut and Ame suffocated inside of it in the Phoenix home, authorities say.
“The pictures of the victim stayed in our minds,” said juror Ann Ospeth. “I think the thing for us was the victim and all the things her life entailed.”
It demanded a death penalty, the jurors agreed.
“We were following what the law stated,” said juror Amanda Heath.
They also found aggravating factors for the four underlying child-abuse counts against Allen, which allowed the judge to impose harsher sentences for those charges.
Superior Court Judge Teresa Sanders sentenced Allen to an additional four consecutive sentences totaling 76 years for those crimes. She was given credit for more than 2,000 days she has already spent in custody.
Allen was found guilty June 26. Then the jury deliberated for a week over whether there were mitigating factors that would al- low Allen to avoid the death penalty and instead be sentenced to life in prison.
They considered her age, her dysfunctional upbringing and the fact that she had no prior criminal record. But they determined the horror of the crime outweighed all of those.
Deal’s father, David, was sentenced in June 2013 in Maricopa County Superior Court to 14 years in prison on an attempted child-abuse charge.
The verdict was read late Monday morning in Maricopa County Superior Court.
Allen becomes the third woman on Arizona’s death row and the first to be sentenced to death since Shawna Forde in Tucson in 2011.
Ame Deal’s short and tragic life ended July 11, 2011, when temperatures in Phoenix were in the triple digits. After stealing a frozen treat on a hot summer day, the child was forced into physical exertion, then padlocked inside the footlocker and left overnight, court records say. Ame was dead by the time someone went to let her out the next morning.
Allen’s husband, John Allen, also is charged with murder and child abuse. He has pleaded not guilty, and his trial is scheduled to begin Oct. 9.
Prosecutor Jeannette Gallagher told the court that she pressed for aggravating factors on Sammantha Allen’s child-abuse convictions because they were relevant to John Allen’s upcoming trial.
Three other family members already are in prison for their roles in the case. Judith Deal is serving a 10-year sentence for a child-abuse conviction. Cynthia Stoltzman, who was Ame’s legal guardian, is serving 24 years for child abuse in the case, and David Deal is serving 14 years for child abuse.