Convicted child killer given new sentencing hearing gets same result

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    MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) — A Mobile woman convicted of killing her two step-children is heading back to death row.

The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals had ruled that Heather Leavell Keaton was entitled to a new sentencing hearing because the judge had not given her a chance to make a statement before initially imposing the death penalty.

Keaton got her day in court Thursday – but the result was the same. Retired Mobile County Circuit Judge Rick Stout, who presided over the original trial in 2015, again sentenced her death.

Keaton was the first woman in Mobile County ever sentenced to death.

According to testimony at her trial, she and common-law husband John DeBlase tortured and killed Chase DeBlase and Natalie DeBlase. Both were young children at the time.

The children’s father, John DeBlase, also is on death row.

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