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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- The slaying of 75-year-old Donna Lou Bott was not "heinous," and defendant Floyd Eugene Maestas should not face a possible death penalty if convicted in the killing, his attorney argued.
Michael Sikora argued before 3rd District Judge Paul Maughan on Monday that the circumstances of the 2004 homicide failed to meet the legal definition of heinous.
But prosecutor Kent Morgan said the elderly woman was tortured.
He alleged that Maestas, 50, terrorized the woman, jumping on top of her as she lay in bed, threatening to kill her unless she told him where she kept her money and stabbing her near the eye.
Maughan took the arguments under advisement and said he would issue a ruling on July 17.
Maestas is accused of breaking into Bott's home on Sept. 28, 2004, with William Hugh Irish and Rodney Roy Renzo, both 19.
The two younger men, who originally were charged with the same crimes as Maestas, reached a plea deal with prosecutors and testified against Maestas at his preliminary hearing, at which he was bound over for trial on charges of capital murder and aggravated burglary.
They said Maestas slashed the woman and kicked, punched, stomped and choked her.
Todd Grey, the state's chief medical examiner, testified Bott died primarily from strangulation and blunt force injuries that, among other things, ruptured her heart and tore the aorta.
Aggravating circumstances that could justify the death penalty would include if the murder were committed in an especially heinous, atrocious, cruel or exceptionally depraved manner; in the commission of an aggravated burglary and aggravated robbery or in the commission of a forcible sexual abuse.
At Monday's hearing, Sikora also argued there was insufficient evidence to support the forcible sexual abuse charge.
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Information from: The Salt Lake Tribune, http://www.sltrib.com
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
