A man convicted of fatally stabbing his 4-year-old daughter and her mother behind a Far East Side house was sentenced to death Wednesday by a Franklin County judge.
A jury recommended the death penalty in August for Kristofer Garrett, 26, but the final decision rested with Common Pleas Judge Chris Brown, who had the option of imposing a life sentence.
Garrett was convicting of aggravated murder charges in the Jan. 5, 2018, deaths of his daughter, Kristina Duckson, and her mother, his ex-girlfriend Nicole Duckson, outside their Fleet Road house.
During a sentencing phase that followed that verdict, the jurors agreed that the aggravating circumstances of Kristina’s murder — that she was under the age of 13 and that Garrett killed her to cover up Nicole’s murder — were so brutal that death was an appropriate sentence.
It was the first time that a Franklin County jury had recommended a death sentence since 2003.
*story by The Columbus Dispatch