Global Courant
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court upholds the sentence of a woman on death row in Alabama who helped her boyfriend kill his two young children.
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from attorneys for Heather Leavell-Keaton. As usual, the court dismissed the case without comment.
Leavell-Keaton was convicted of murder in the death of 3-year-old Chase DeBlase and manslaughter in the death of his sister, 4-year-old Natalie DeBlase. Prosecutors said she poisoned the children with antifreeze. There was also evidence that the children’s father, John DeBlase, had strangled them. The remains of the children were found in the forests of Alabama and Mississippi.
Leavell-Keaton was originally Sentenced to death in 2015. However, a new sentencing hearing was ordered, after a court found that the judge who sentenced Leavell-Keaton to death erred in not giving her a chance to speak for herself before sentencing. In 2021, she was again sentenced to death.
Leavell-Keaton’s attorneys argued in their petition to the Supreme Court that she should have been given the opportunity to provide evidence of her good behavior in prison between 2015 and 2021 at the most recent sentencing hearing.
Leavell-Keaton is one of five wives death row in alabama.
John DeBlase was also convicted of the children’s deaths in a separate trial and sentenced to death. He remains on death row.
