USA - California. The capital sentence of Paul Gordon Smith Jr. has been converted to life without parole

The capital sentence of Paul Gordon Smith Jr. has been converted to life without the possibility of parole. Smith was resentenced in absentia in Shasta Superior Court for the murder of 20-year-old Lora Sinner while they were camping in 1998 in the Trinity Alps. Shasta County District Attorney Stephen Carlton announced earlier in July that his office would not retry the penalty phase of Smith's trial. He will be moved off San Quentin State Prison's death row. The California Supreme Court in April overturned the sentence, ruling that Smith was improperly barred from calling an expert witness during the penalty phase. The high court upheld Smith's 2002 conviction of 1st-degree murder. "Paul Smith certainly deserves to be executed," Carlton was quoted as saying in the Redding Record Searchlight, announcing his decision not to return to court. But, he said, it would likely cost the county between $1 million and $2 million to retry the penalty phase and, he added, it's highly unlikely Smith would ever be executed even if he were resentenced to death. Since 1978, more than 850 people have been sentenced to death in California, but only 13 have been executed, the last being in 2006, when executions were halted by a federal judge, who found the intravenous method used by the state may pose too much risk for pain to be constitutionally sound. Many legal and law enforcement experts believe the death penalty will probably be abolished in California within the next years.