State v. Cauthern

OPINION

ANDERSON, Chief Justice.

This case is before the Court for automatic review of the Court of Criminal Appeals’ affirmance of a conviction for first-degree murder and a sentence of death imposed upon the defendant, Ronnie M. Cauthern, in a Gibson County resentencing hearing.1 In addition to the death sentence imposed for the murder of Rosemary Smith, the jury returned a life sentence for the murder of Patrick Smith. In imposing the death sen-fence, the jury found that the evidence of one aggravating circumstance, “[t]he murder was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel in that it involved…