the Nevada Supreme Court has ordered a new penalty trial for a man sentenced...

the Nevada Supreme Court has ordered a new penalty trial for a man sentenced to death for killing an elderly couple in a robbery in 1994. The court threw out a number of aggravating factors used by a panel of judges to sentence Antoine Williams, now 40, to die for the robbery and slayings of Alice and William Nail. The court said the new penalty hearing should be in front of a jury. The so-called "aggravators" were thrown out based on a 2004 ruling in another death case involving Robert McConnell. In that ruling, the court said a defendant can't be convicted of 1st-degree murder using a particular circumstance, such as the fact that a killing occurred during a robbery, and then have robbery used again as an aggravating circumstance in the penalty phase of a trial. In some other death cases brought to the state high court since the decision to retroactively apply the McConnell rule, the court has been able to reweigh the factors in the cases and uphold the death sentences. But in Williams' case, the court said it could not conclude he would have been sentenced to death for the killings given the information presented on his behalf.