Sammantha Allen, 29 (left), was sentenced to death on Monday for her role in the 2011 death of her 10-year-old cousin Ame Deal (right)
Sammantha Allen, 29 (left), was sentenced to death on Monday for her role in the 2011 death of her 10-year-old cousin Ame Deal (right)
Jurors sentenced a Phoenix woman to death on Monday in the killing of a 10-year-old cousin who was locked in a small plastic storage box and left to die as punishment for stealing an ice pop.
Sammantha Allen, 29, will become the 55th woman on death row in the USafter the jury reached its verdict Monday(US time), the Daily Mail reported.
There are only two other women on death row in Arizona, which is among the states struggling to buy execution drugs after pharmaceutical companies began blocking the use of their products in lethal injections.
Jurors had been deliberating since Wednesday on whether to send Allen to death row or spare her life in the July 2011 killing of Ame Deal. She was convicted of first-degree murder and four counts of child abuse on June 26.
Authorities said Allen and her husband John, 29, are responsible for making Ame get into the box the night before as punishment for having stolen an ice pop.
Ame was forced to do backbends and run around in the 103 degree heat outside before being locked inside the box by the Allens.
Sweating profusely, she was then squeezed into the footlocker, which was padlocked shut.
Ame, who was four feet, two inches tall, suffocated inside the box, which was 14-inches wide and had just two small holes near the handle, as the Allens slept.
When they opened the box six or seven hours later, Ame was dead.
Police said when the girl was found her clothes were soiled and she had marks on her right knee caused by 'forceful contact' with the box's lid.
After the incident, Allen said she thought her husband would let the girl out before going to bed.
"There never was intention on killing her," Allen said in her statement to police, which was videotaped.
"He (John Allen) said he was going to get her out," she said.
The trial of John Allen is scheduled to start October 9. He's also charged with first-degree murder and child abuse and faces the death penalty as well. He has pleaded not guilty.
The girl's death was the culmination of a history of abuse that a handful of relatives heaped on her, authorities say.
Ame was forced to eat dog feces, crush aluminum cans barefoot, consume hot sauce and get in the storage box on other occasions. She also was kicked in the face, beaten with a wooden paddle and forcibly dunked after being thrown in a cold swimming pool, investigators said.
Ame was one of at least a dozen kids being brought up in the three-bedroom house, along with at least 10 adults.
Many neighbors reported hearing screaming from the house but none told police as they did not want to break the family apart.
The children would roam the streets outside the home until the early hours and they often had little or no clothes on, sometimes wearing no diaper or shoes, they said.
Ame died of suffocation.
Ame was the child singled out for torture, however, a witness told authorities.
Adults at the home originally claimed Ame hid during a late-night game of hide-and-seek and wasn't found until hours later. Three other relatives are in prison serving sentences for abusing Ame.
Sammantha Allen's mother, Cynthia Stoltzmann, who also was Ame's legal guardian, is serving a 24-year prison sentence for a child abuse conviction. Ame's grandmother, Judith Deal, is serving a 10-year sentenced for attempted child abuse.
Her father David Deal was sentenced to 14 years in prison after taking a plea deal in 2013, pleading guilty to attempted child abuse.
Her mother Shirley Deal told AZCentral in 2012 that she tried to get her daughter back years prior, but the family would move every time she tracked them down. "I want the death penalty on all of them," she said then.
Child welfare authorities in Arizona said they didn't receive any reports of abuse before her death. But child welfare reports from Utah, where the family lived before moving to Phoenix, listed Ame as an abused child, police said.
The other children in the house were placed with state Child Protective Services after Ame's death.
The verdict comes after executions in Arizona were put on hold following the 2014 death of a prisoner who was given 15 doses of a two-drug combination before he died in what his attorney called a botched execution.
But the state is now able to resume executions after a lawsuit that challenged the way Arizona carries out the death penalty was settled earlier this summer. No executions are scheduled.
