Danny Montano's conviction of slaying another inmate...

Danny Montano's conviction of slaying another inmate at Tucson's Cimarron unit is upheld. The Arizona Supreme Court overturned a man's death sentence and ordered him resentenced in the Tucson prison slaying of another inmate. The state Supreme Court on March 18 upheld the murder conviction of Danny N. Montano but withheld until yesterday a review of the death sentence done under a June 2002 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. The 2002 ruling said Arizona's old and since-changed death penalty sentencing law was unconstitutional because judges, not juries, decided whether circumstances existed that could warrant a death sentence. The Arizona high court said in yesterday's ruling that it could not find beyond a reasonable doubt that a jury would have decided sentencing issues in Montano's case the same way as the judge who sentenced him. Including Montano's case, the Supreme Court has ordered 15 resentencings while upholding one man's death sentence. Montano was convicted in the Aug. 7, 1995, murder of Raymond Jackson in the Cimarron Unit of the Arizona State Prison Complex-Tucson. Montano was serving two concurrent life terms on armed robbery convictions when corrections officers found Jackson lying face down on his bunk in a pool of blood, his head covered with a sheet. He was stabbed 179 times.