Death penalty overturned for convert

LOS ANGELES — A federal appeals court set aside the death penalty of an Orange County, Calif., man convicted of the 1980 murder of a Garden Grove woman. The court ruled Aug. 1 that the judge in the case wrongly encouraged the jury not to consider William Charles Payton’s conversion to Christianity before it recommended that he receive the death penalty.

Payton, now 43, was convicted 22 years ago of the rape and murder of 21-year-old Pamela Montgomery, and in March 1982 he was sentenced to death. The Orange County Register reported that Payton’s attorneys argued that his conversion to Christianity made life without parole a more appropriate sentence than death, since he would likely help other inmates find faith, too.