Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill is seeking the death penalty for the man accused of killing 15-year-old Baleigh Bagshaw.
The prosecutor this month filed a notice to seek the death penalty if Shaun Patrick French is found guilty in the May 2018 case.
French, 24, is charged with aggravated murder and sex crimes against Bagshaw; French lived in Bagshaw’s Salt Lake City home for several months in 2017.
In charging documents, police wrote that French admitted to a friend that he killed Bagshaw, saying he “damn near cut her head off" when he went to discuss sex crime allegations she’d made against him.