AUSTIN, Texas, Feb. 9 (UPI) -- A Texas woman convicted of tampering with evidence in a 2005 dismemberment slaying must be returned to jail while she awaits resentencing, a judge said.
Laura Ashley Hall yelled as she was dragged away from a Travis County, Texas, courtroom Monday after state District Judge Wilford Flowers ordered her returned to jail, the Austin (Texas) American Statesman reported.
Flowers said Hall, 26, had to return to jail after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals refused to consider her appeals of the 5-year sentence she received in connection with the 2005 Austin murder and mutilation of 21-year-old Jennifer Cave, the newspaper reported.
The American-Statesman said Hall had been out on bail after an appellate court last year upheld her conviction on hindering apprehension and tampering with evidence but found that her original sentencing hearing was unfair.
Colton Pitonyak was convicted of the 2005 murder of Cave, whose head and hands had been cut off and were found in plastic bags. Hall, Pitonyak's occasional girlfriend, was convicted of trying to help him cover up the crime, the newspaper said.
