01 April 2019 :

The State Supreme Court confirmed that Milton Montalvo deserves a new sentencing trial. This decision backs a ruling county Judge Richard K. Renn issued 2 years ago (see HoC June 9, 2017). Like Renn, the Court upheld Montalvo’s 2 1st-degree murder convictions for the April 1998 killings of his estranged wife Miriam Ascensio and her boyfriend Manuel Ramirez Santana. The Court also agreed that errors at trial require that a new penalty phase be held in the case so a jury can decide whether Montalvo should receive 2 new death sentences or be ordered to spend the rest of his life in prison. The case came to the Supreme Court after Montalvo, now 56, and the district attorney’s office both challenged Renn’s 2017 ruling.