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A two-week death penalty trial has been scheduled to begin Sept. 28 for Brandon Perry Smith, accused of killing a woman in a St. George apartment in 2010.
Smith, 33, is charged in 5th District Court with aggravated murder and aggravated assault in the stabbing death of 20-year-old Jerrica Christensen.
Prosecutors announced last year that they are seeking Smith's execution.
Smith is accused of beating Christensen and cutting her throat with a pocket knife moments after his friend, Paul Clifford Ashton, shot and killed Brandie Sue Dawn Jerden and shot and wounded James Fiske.
Smith's attorneys have implied in court papers that their client killed the woman because he felt threatened by Ashton, but prosecutors have argued that Smith is cold-hearted and relished taking the life of a stranger.
Prosecutors have alleged several aggravating factors in the killing: that Christensen was killed during a criminal episode in which two or more people were killed, that the homicide was committed incident to attempted kidnapping, that Christensen was killed to prevent her from testifying and that the homicide was committed in an "especially heinous, atrocious, cruel or exceptionally depraved manner."
Defense attorney Gary Pendleton wrote in court papers that Smith went to Ashton's St. George apartment on Dec. 11, 2010, after Ashton had texted him, asking for a gun and saying he needed to "defend himself."
Smith came to the apartment with two guns, but Pendleton wrote that it quickly became apparent to his client that Ashton was not in any grave danger. Christensen, Jerden and Fiske were at the apartment moving, and at some point, Jerden confronted Ashton — who was seated in an electric wheelchair because of an accident that injured his leg — about a missing mountain bike. Jerden struck Ashton in the face with a plastic clamshell toolbox, according to the defense team, and Smith pulled out a gun he was carrying. Ashton pulled out a gun, as well, and shot Jerden.
Ashton then shot at Fiske, a bullet hitting him in the right shoulder. Smith later told police that Christensen had locked herself in the bathroom after the shooting. He kicked in the door, he told a detective, while Ashton yelled at him to "get her" and "do it," and ultimately cut her throat with his pocketknife, according to attorneys.
Ashton is serving two life sentences in federal prison after he pleaded guilty in the apartment killings, and also admitted to kidnapping and aiding in the murder of a homeless man in October 2010.
Smith's trial will be the second death penalty case tried this year. The last trial ended Wednesday, when jurors sentenced Douglas Anderson Lovell to death for the 1985 murder of Joyce Yost.
Twitter: @jm_miller