USA - Oklahoma. The Court of Appeals has for the 2nd time thrown out the death sentences of Victor Cornell Miller.

The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has for the 2nd time thrown out the death sentences of Victor Cornell Miller. The court affirmed Miller's 2 1st-degree murder convictions but modified 1 death sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole and ordered a district court to resentence him on the other murder conviction. Miller has been found guilty of murder twice in connection with the Aug. 31, 1999 shooting deaths of Mary Agnes Bowles, 77, and Jerald Thurman, 44. Prosecutors maintained that Miller shot Thurman before Miller's accomplice, John Fitzgerald Hanson, shot Bowles. At a trial in 2002, Miller was convicted of both murders and was sentenced to die for Thurman's murder. He received a no-parole life term and was spared from a death sentence for Bowles' murder. The appeals court overturned those convictions and sentences in 2004 and granted Miller a new trial. He was convicted by another jury in 2008 and sentenced to death for both murders. Today the appeals court, with a vote of 3-2, modified his sentence in the Bowles murder to life without parole and ordered a resentencing for the Thurman murder.