| NEWS | Arizona Department of Corrections Killer from p 9 Supreme Court Judge John R. Lopez IV. “We affirm Sammantha’s convictions and the imposition of the death sentence,” Lopez wrote. The court did reverse one of four child abuse convictions for Allen and ruled that she had been given an aggravated sentence for the charge without the necessary evidence. But that changes little for Allen. She will be resen- tenced for the single charge — but she already has received a 74-year cumulative sentence for the other crimes, plus the death penalty. The case was, after all, one of the most shocking local murders in recent memory. The details are gruesome. Allen is 34 years old now. She was 22 when Deal was killed. New round of appeals In July 2011, Ame was living with more than a dozen people in a rental home on West Romley Road in Phoenix. She was abandoned by her mother, Shirley Deal, to live with her extended family, including her cousin, Sammantha Allen. Family members forced Ame to eat hot sauce and dog feces and run barefoot on the cement in scorching heat. They beat her with a paddle. As punishment, Ame’s aunt would some- times trap her in the plastic box, in which she had to curl to fit inside. The box was 31 inches long. Ame was 48 inches tall. On the night of her death, according to court testimony, John and Sammantha Allen put Ame in the box again — this time for stealing a popsicle. They didn’t check on her until the next morning. By that time, she was dead. When police arrived that morning, the Allens and some of the other children who lived in a home claimed that Ame had died as a result of a hide-and-seek game gone wrong. After John and Sammantha went to bed, they said, another child had locked Ame in the box — a horrific accident. But a pattern of child abuse at the home soon emerged. A neighbor told police that they had seen Ame trapped in the box before. Ultimately, John Allen admitted that he and his wife had put Ame in the box as punishment and, to prevent her from escaping, had 12 John Allen and Sammantha Allen, husband and wife, both received the death penalty for the murder of Ame Deal. padlocked it shut. The couple had planned to check on her before they went to sleep. But they didn’t. “I just didn’t get up,” Allen told detectives. The court decision late last month is hardly the end of the road for Sammantha Allen. In Arizona, any death penalty case is appealed automatically to the Arizona Supreme Court. Allen now has gone through this initial step. Next, her case will enter a second round of appeals proceedings in which she can challenge her conviction all the way to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court. Only once all appeals are exhausted can the state carry out a death sentence. Of the 111 people on Arizona’s death row, just 22 have exhausted their appeals. All were convicted more than two decades ago and have spent an average of 30 years on death row waiting for a death warrant. In May, the state executed Clarence Dixon, the first person to be executed in Arizona in nearly eight years. Allen, one of just three women on Arizona’s death row, has many legal battles ahead. Multiple people in the house where Ame died ended up in prison. They included Allen and her husband, John, both charged with murder in Deal’s death; Allen’s mother, Cynthia Stoltzmann, who received 24 years for child abuse; Judith Deal, Ame’s grandmother, who is serving a 10-year sentence; and David Deal, Ame’s father, who received 14 years, also for child abuse. For years, the family had moved around, traveling from state to state, at times falling on the radar of local Child Protective Services. Now, they’re trapped in Arizona. In 2020, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld John Allen’s murder conviction and death sentence, as it did in Sammantha Allen’s case. A decade after the night they put Ame in that box, the husband and wife remain, together, on death row. Sammantha Allen’s attorney, Treasure VanDreumel, did not respond to inquiries from Phoenix New Times about the case. AUG 11TH–AUG 17TH, 2022 PHOENIX NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | NEWS | OPINION | FEEDBACK | CONTENTS | phoenixnewtimes.com
