USA - Arizona. Warren Summerlin, whose 1982 case helped define how the death penalty is imposed in the United States, got off death row.

Warren Summerlin, whose 1982 case helped define how the death penalty is imposed in the United States, got his ticket off death row. Summerlin, 61, who raped and murdered Brenna Bailey in 1981, will be resentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. According to the prosecutor and court records, even if he is paroled, he still must serve an additional 28 years for sexual assault. He cannot be sentenced to life with no chance of parole because that punishment did not exist at the time of the murder. Summerlin's case went before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004 to determine whether another landmark decision would be retroactive. In 2002, the high court had ruled that juries and not judges would decide if aggravating circumstances of a murder existed that would demand a death penalty. That case, known as the Ring Decision, was named for its defendant, Timothy Ring. Ring and about 30 other murderers who had been sentenced to death by judges were granted new trials to reassess their death penalties. Ring sidestepped a retrial last year when a life sentence was granted in a plea agreement. Summerlin wanted a new jury trial as well, based on the Ring Decision, but the Supreme Court turned him down, ruling that Ring would affect only defendants who had not yet finished first-round appeals to the state and U.S. supreme courts. Summerlin's sentence and conviction had been upheld by those courts, and he was going through subsequent appeals. A year later, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a sentencing retrial to Summerlin anyway, on the grounds that his attorney had not properly investigated mitigating factors that would persuade the judge to spare his life. "Due to the passage of time and death of at least two key prosecution witnesses, the state would have difficulty proving the most serious aggravating factor," according to a statement issued by the  Attorney's Office. The  Attorney's Office withdrew its intent to seek the death penalty on Dec. 2. Judge Gary Donahoe of Maricopa County Superior Court accepted the decision Dec. 12 and set sentencing for Jan. 9.