SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Supreme Court has rejected an appeal filed by a death row inmate.
In a ruling issued Friday, the state’s top court rejected Taberone Honie’s claims of ineffective assistance of counsel.
Honie was convicted in 1999 of killing Claudia Benn in her Cedar City home. Iron County prosecutors said he slit her throat and sexually assaulted her with a knife.
The woman’s grandchildren were in the home at the time of the slaying.
Honie was convicted by a jury of aggravated murder, object rape, forcible sodomy, aggravated sexual assault, burglary and aggravated burglary. He waived his right to have a jury sentence him. The judge sentenced him to death.
Read the Utah Supreme Court’s ruling here:
