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McALLEN, Texas (AP) — Mexico's president-elect asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to evaluate the murder case of a Mexican woman who was sentenced to 99 years in prison for the death of a Texas boy.

Enrique Pena Nieto filed a brief in his personal capacity supporting the appeal of Rosa Estela Olvera Jimenez. He argued that Jimenez was denied due process because she wasn't given funds to hire expert witnesses and had ineffective counsel.

Pena Nieto was governor of the state of Mexico when Jimenez, a native of that state, was sentenced in 2005 for the death of a nearly 2-year-old boy she had been babysitting in Austin. The boy died three months after choking on five paper towels lodged in his throat.

Jimenez said the boy ate the paper towels, but prosecutors argued that she stuffed the towels into the boy's mouth.

Pena Nieto, who was elected president in July and takes office in December, was joined in the brief by the current governor of the state of Mexico and a Mexican lawyer.

"Granting Rosa's petition could rescue an innocent woman from languishing in prison for the rest of her life, cut off from her daughter and the son born to her in jail as she awaited trial," the brief said.

It also could also impact other cases. The brief notes that more than two million Mexican nationals live in Texas, and many of them — like Jimenez — are there illegally. Without resources, the brief argues, they are at a disadvantage in the criminal justice system.

Jimenez was five months pregnant in 2003 when she was babysitting the boy and her own young daughter.

"The little boy loved her," said Chris Johns, an Austin attorney representing Pena Nieto in the case. There was no evidence of trauma anywhere on the boy's body, he said.

Jimenez argued at trial that the boy had eaten the paper towels himself and she had a neighbor dial 911 after seeing the boy turn blue. Prosecutors alleged Jimenez held the boy down and shoved paper towels down his throat, according to the brief.

The jury sided with prosecutors and handed down the sentence. Jimenez's children were later taken to live with her mother in Mexico, Johns said.

Jimenez is requesting that the Supreme Court consider her case on her claims of innocence and ineffective counsel. Her trial attorney had asked the judge for funds to hire expert witnesses but didn't do so on the record, jeopardizing her initial state appeal, which was denied.

She later went before a habeas court seeking a new trial. With the financial support of the state of Mexico, she hired expert witnesses, and the judge presiding over four days of testimony from Jimenez's experts recommended she receive a new trial.

In April, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals said it agreed with some but not all of that judge's findings and denied Jimenez's request for a new trial.

Ryan Bates, an attorney handling Jimenez's appeal, said that if the habeas judge had such strong doubts, due process requires she get a new trial.

"When an impartial judge can look at the case of a habeas petitioner like Rosa Jimenez and say that it's more likely than not that no rational juror would find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in a retrial, everyone involved knows that there's severe constitutional doubts about the validity of the original trial and its verdict," he said.

AKRON, Ohio (AP) — A man accused of shooting his wife of 45 years in a hospital intensive care unit in what may have been a mercy killing was charged Wednesday with aggravated murder, and his attorney said the man always acted out of love.

John Wise appeared before a municipal court judge in Akron via video from jail Wednesday morning. No plea was entered. He must return to court Aug. 22.

Wise, who lived with his wife in Massillon, is accused of shooting her at her bedside in the ICU unit of Akron General Medical Center Saturday. She died the next morning.

His attorney, Paul Adamson, said after the brief court session that the unfolding case would show Wise acted out of love.

"I'm thoroughly convinced he's a good man. I think his past history bears that out," Adamson said.

"Forty-five years of marriage, blessed to be deeply in love with his wife throughout those 45 years, and I am absolutely confident that everything that he's ever done for his wife has been done out of deep love, including the events that just recently transpired."

Wise appeared in court Tuesday and was apparently confused about initially being charged only with attempted murder, asking "Is she not dead?" Visiting Judge Marvin Shapiro told Wise that he would soon have an attorney who could answer his questions.

Prosecutors upgraded the charge to aggravated murder after an autopsy showed that Barbara Wise died from a gunshot wound to her head. A county medical examiner ruled her death a homicide.

Nurses on the hospital floor where Barbara Wise had been in critical condition in the ICU for several days at first thought an oxygen tank had exploded when they heard a popping sound, a 911 caller told a dispatcher.

A woman, who identified herself as a nurse, said she and others looked into the room and saw a man dressed in black. "We saw him sitting there with a gun. He was, like, loading it," she said.

The caller said she didn't know if anybody had been shot, but she heard screaming as she hid in a room.

Why Barbara Wise was in the hospital hasn't been released.

Emergency personnel responded to the Wises' home a week before the shooting for a medical call that involved advanced life support, including oxygen and a heart monitor. Hospital and emergency officials have said they can't disclose any information about patients because of privacy rules.

Wise entered the hospital on Saturday through the main entrance and went up to his wife's room without drawing any attention, apparently keeping the handgun concealed, hospital spokesman Jim Gosky said. A doctor nearby heard a distinctive popping sound, he said.

JOLIET, Ill. (AP) — A pathologist who performed a second autopsy on Drew Peterson's third wife years after she was found dead in her bathtub says the only plausible explanation for her death is that she was murdered.

Larry Blum described to jurors Thursday how Kathleen Savio had a gash on the back of her head and fresh bruises on her front. He says an accidental fall couldn't have caused injuries on both sides of her body.

Peterson has pleaded not guilty to killing Savio in 2004. Authorities initially ruled her death accidental. Blum performed his autopsy after Peterson's fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, disappeared in 2007. That eventually led to Peterson's arrest.

Blum has also said there were no edges pronounced enough along Savio's circular tub to cause a straight-line wound to her head.

HEFEI, China (AP) — The wife of a disgraced Chinese politician received a suspended death sentence Monday for the murder of a British businessman, as authorities move to tidy up a huge political scandal ahead of a once-in-a-decade leadership transition this fall.

Gu Kailai's sentencing clears the way for the ruling Communist Party to deal with her husband, Bo Xilai, who was formerly one of China's most prominent politicians before being stripped of his Politburo post in the scandal. Bo has not been directly implicated in the murder of Neil Heywood, but is accused of unspecified grave violations of party discipline.

"They are eager to close the case and move on," said Dali Yang, director of the University of Chicago Center in Beijing.

Gu's suspended sentence will almost certainly be commuted to life in prison after two years, a relatively lenient punishment resulting from her cooperation with investigators and what the court deemed her mental instability at the time of Heywood's death by cyanide poisoning last November.

Family aide Zhang Xiaojun, accused of abetting the murder, was sentenced to nine years, Hefei Intermediate People's Court official Tang Yigan told reporters.

Bo was not called as a witness in the Gu trial and neither the verdict nor the evidence presented made any mention of him. The charges against Gu and Zhang also scrupulously avoided any mention of corruption or abuse of power, serving to shield the party's image from damage.

Four policemen accused of covering up the crime were given sentences from five to 11 years.

State media say Gu, 53, confessed to intentional homicide at a one-day trial held in this eastern China city on Aug. 9. The media reports — the court has been closed to international media — say she and Heywood had a dispute over money and Heywood allegedly threatened her son. State media said the two feuded after Heywood asked for a multi-million dollar commission on a real estate venture that had gone bad.

Gu was accused of luring the victim to a Chongqing hotel, getting him drunk and then pouring cyanide into his mouth.

Tang said Gu and Zhang told the court they would not appeal.

The ruling against Gu will set expectations for Bo to be dealt with severely, said Cheng Li, an expert in Chinese elite politics at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

"If Bo does not get put through the legal process in the next few months, Gu will be seen as a scapegoat," he said.

State broadcaster CCTV showed Gu dressed in a white blouse and black pants suit briefly addressing the court from inside the dock surrounded by waist-high wooden columns.

"This verdict is just. It shows special respect for the law, reality and life," Gu said in calm, measured phrases.

The sentencing moves China one step closer to resolving its biggest political crisis in two decades that exposed divisions within the leadership and threatened to complicate plans for Vice President Xi Jinping to succeed Hu Jintao as top leader at a party congress expected in October.

Questions remain, however, over how the party intends to deal with Bo, who was dismissed in March as the powerful Communist Party boss of the major city of Chongqing and suspended from the 25-member Politburo.

Bo had at one time been considered a candidate for the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee at the upcoming 18th Communist Party national congress and it isn't clear whether the party will deal with him internally or put him on trial and risk further harm to its image.

The case has for months engrossed ordinary Chinese, among whom Bo remains broadly popular, especially with the working classes drawn by his populist flair and policies such as building affordable housing and cracking down on property developers and others he labeled gangsters. Many have tended to see his downfall as a politically motivated takedown engineered by his party rivals.

"I think it is just a political struggle, it has nothing to do with us ordinary people. The 18th party congress is coming very soon, so it must have something to do with that. I don't really care about it," said a Beijing investment advisor, who would only give his surname, Zhai, because of the sensitivity of the topic.

Tang said the court considered Gu's testimony against others, her confession and repentance, and her psychological impairment as mitigating factors in sentencing. But he said it rejected claims that Heywood's threats had prompted the crime, saying there was no evidence he intended to make good on them.

During Gu's trail, the court was told she had suffered from chronic insomnia, anxiety and depression and paranoia in the past, and that she had been dependent on medication, but it found that she willfully carried out the murder.

An amendment to China's criminal law in 2011 said that criminals with life sentences who show proper conduct can have their life sentences cut to 25 years. Chinese law also allows for medical parole so Gu could be released after serving even less time.

For their part in the cover-up, former deputy Chongqing police chief Guo Weiguo was sentenced to 11 years, leading officer Li Yang was given 11, and officers Wang Pengfei and Wang Zhi were given five years each.

Former Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun, whose February flight to a U.S. consulate revealed suspicions that Heywood had been murdered, is expected to go on trial soon. Gu allegedly told Wang about her crime, but it isn't known if he'll be charged in relation to the murder.

Security was tight outside the court on Monday, with police officers standing guard around the building and at least a half dozen SWAT police vans parked on each corner.

Gu's arrest and the ouster of her husband sparked the biggest political turbulence in China since the bloody crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests in 1989.

Lawyers and political analysts said politics appeared to weigh heavily on the verdict, with the verdict on Gu apparently calibrated to assuage demands for justice without being overly harsh. .

Beijing-based rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang said the outcome ignored legal strictures that would have required the death penalty, given that Gu had admitted to committing premeditated murder. "Although I welcome this verdict, it doesn't actually stand up from a legal standpoint," Pu said.

Peking University law professor He Weifang said political considerations were clearly behind the relative leniency shown to Gu.

"If the murderer was an ordinary person who killed someone, not to mention killing a foreigner, the criminal would be sentenced to immediate execution," He said.

Follow Gillian Wong on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gillianwong

URBANA, Ohio (AP) — A man who pleaded guilty to stabbing, suffocating and dismembering his girlfriend has been sentenced to life in prison and must serve at least 42 years before being eligible for parole.

Matthew Puccio, who was sentenced Monday in Champaign County Common Pleas Court, pleaded guilty last month to aggravated murder in the death of Jessica Rae Sacco along with other charges including felonious assault, gross abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence. The remains of Sacco, 21, were found in the bathtub of their apartment in Urbana, in western Ohio, in late March.

Authorities said Puccio, 26, stabbed Sacco in the abdomen in an argument and suffocated her hours later with a plastic bag. Prosecutor Nick Selvaggio said in court that Sacco fought Puccio off at first but Puccio wrapped a second bag around her face.

The prosecutor also said Puccio enlisted the help of four friends to help in covering up the crime by dismembering the body and helping him dispose of limbs in southern Ohio and northern Kentucky. The two men and two women also have pleaded guilty to charges in the case and were sentenced on various counts.

Puccio told the judge before his sentencing that he loved Sacco. The Dayton Daily News reported that when the judge asked how he could "kill and butcher" someone he loved, he replied: "That's what I'm still trying to figure out."

Sacco's mother, Susan Taynor, was in the courtroom on Monday, holding her daughter's ashes in a red velvet bag in her lap.

Taynor said after the sentencing that she believes Puccio is "an expert in knowing how to manipulate," the Urbana Daily Citizen reported.

During the investigation, Selvaggio said Puccio gave at least five versions of what happened to Sacco before he finally told authorities the truth. Selvaggio said that Puccio initially denied the killing, saying Sacco had kicked him out of the house. Other versions included the claim that he killed her in self-defense after she assaulted him and that he didn't mean to dismember her.

In media interviews, Puccio said he met Sacco through Facebook while he was living in Texas, they moved in together in Urbana and they argued often. He also said Sacco begged him to kill her after he confronted her about text messages she'd sent saying she wanted him dead.

Puccio originally pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity but changed his plea after he was found competent to stand trial.

JOLIET, Ill. (AP) — A prosecutor has asked jurors to use "common sense" and to convict former suburban Chicago police officer Drew Peterson of killing his third wife.

Prosecutor Chris Koch (KOHK') said during closing arguments in Peterson's trial Tuesday that a common sense examination of evidence shows Peterson killed Kathleen Savio in 2004 and that she didn't die accidentally by falling in her bathtub.

Peterson is charged with first-degree murder in Savio's death and is considered a suspect but hasn't been charged in the 2007 disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson.

Peterson denies wrongdoing in both cases. He wasn't charged in Savio's death until after her body was exhumed following Stacy Peterson's disappearance.

Savio was found dead in her dry bathtub with a gash on the back of her head.

CAIRO (AP) — Ambassador Chris Stevens was still breathing when Libyans stumbled across him inside a room in the American Consulate in Benghazi, pulled him out and drove him to a hospital after last week's deadly attack in the eastern Libyan city, witnesses told The Associated Press on Monday.

Fahd al-Bakoush, a freelance videographer, was among the Libyan civilians searching through the consulate after gunmen and protesters rampaged through it last Tuesday night. Al-Bakoush said he heard someone call out that he had tripped over a dead body.

A group of people gathered as several men pulled the seemingly lifeless form from the room. They saw he was alive and a foreigner, though no one recognized him as Stevens, al-Bakoush said.

He was breathing and his eyelids flickered, he said. "I tested his pulse and he was alive," he said "No doubt. His face was blackened and he was like a paralyzed person."

Video taken by al-Bakoush and posted on YouTube shows Stevens being carried out of a small dark room through a window with a raised shutter and being laid on the floor. One man touches his neck to feel for a pulse. Some of the men shout, "God is great."

The video has been authenticated since Stevens' face is clearly visible and he is wearing the same white t-shirt seen in authenticated photos of him being carried away one another man's shoulders, presumably moments later. Two colleagues of al-Bakoush who also witnessed the scene confirmed that he took the footage.

Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the attack on the consulate, part of a wave of assaults on U.S. diplomatic missions in Muslim countries over a low-budget movie made in the United daStates that denigrates the Prophet Muhammad.

The accounts of all three witnesses mesh with that of the doctor who treated Stevens that night. Last week, the doctor told The Associated Press that Stevens was nearly lifeless when he was brought by Libyans, with no other Americans around, to the Benghazi hospital where he worked. He said Stevens had severe asphyxia from the smoke and that he tried to resuscitate him with no success. Only later did security officials confirm it was Stevens.

A freelance photographer who was with al-Bakoush at the scene, Abdel-Qader Fadl, said Stevens was unconscious and "maybe moved his head, but only once."

Ahmed Shams, a 22-year-old arts student who works with the two, said the group cried out "God is great" in celebration after discovering he wasn't dead. "We were happy to see him alive. The youth tried to rescue him. But there was no security, no ambulances, nothing to help," he said.

The men carried Stevens to a private car to drive him to the hospital since there was no ambulance, all three witnesses said.