PHOENIX — Editor's note: The above video is from 2017.
The Arizona Supreme Court upheld the death sentence for John Michael Allen on Tuesday, according to documents. Allen was convicted of first-degree murder in 2017 following the 2011 murder of 10-year-old Ame Deal.
John Allen and his wife Samantha were both convicted and sentenced to death after they locked 10-year-old Deal, their cousin, in a plastic box as punishment for taking a popsicle.
Deal died from of suffocation and heat.
"This was one of the most unnecessary deaths of a child I've ever seen," Judge Erin Otis said in 2017.
When questioned by police in 2011, John Allen initially said Deal was accidentally locked in the box during a game of hide-and-seek.
Authorities later learned Deal had been previously abused by the family and locked in the box as punishment. That's when John Allen confessed to abusing Deal over the preceding year and locking her in the box in July 2011, when she died.
John and Samantha Allen were tried separately and both convicted to death by legal injection.
Other family members had been sentenced to time in jail for Deal’s death.
Deal's father, David Deal, previously pleaded guilty to attempted child abuse. Her grandmother, Judith Deal, was also sentenced to jail time for her role in the abuse. And Deal's aunt Cynthia Stoltzmann was sentenced to 25 years in jail for attempted child abuse.
While the Arizona Supreme Court upheld John Allen's death sentence in his automatic appeal, the court's decision vacated sentences on three of John Allen's counts: conspiracy to commit child abuse, intentional child abuse and reckless child abuse (counts 2, 4 and 5 of his five convictions).
For those counts, the court is remanding the case to the trial court for resentencing.