The U

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco (which has jurisdiction over California and 8 other Western states) overturned both the death sentence and the guilty verdict of Gary Benn, who was convicted of fatally shooting his half brother, Jack Dethlefsen, and a friend, Mike Nelson, in 1988 in Washington state. In its unanimous ruling, the 3-judge appellate panel ruled that Pierce County, Wash., prosecutors had improperly failed to disclose information about a jailhouse informant who testified that Benn had confessed the crime to him in jail.