JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A lawn maintenance man convicted of killing an 82-year-old woman in December 2009 was sentenced to death Thursday.
A judge upheld a jury's 8-4 recommendation for the death penalty for Cecil King that was made earlier this year.
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King was convicted of killing Renie Bain, whose home he serviced. Bain's family members found her beaten to death in her home. Prosecutors said King killed Bain with a hammer, striking her at least 17 times.
Prosecutors said King forced his way into Bain's house on Goodby's Trace Drive, hit her in the head, stole several items and left in her Cadillac. The car was recovered the next day.

In addition to being found guilty of murder, King was found guilty of grand theft auto, burglary, carrying a dangerous weapon and dealing in stolen property, among other charges.
Prosecutors said the evidence against King rapidly piled up in the days after Bain's death. That evidence included video from a pawn shop, which prosecutors said shows King selling a bracelet stolen from Bain's home the day she was killed, and a bloody shirt detectives found in King's home.
One of Bain's relatives found her dead in her ransacked Brierwood home.
King maintained his innocence, saying the evidence linking him to the crime was nothing but a coincidence.
Prosecutors said the final piece of evidence came into place when detectives took a DNA sample from King, swabbing his cheeks. Authorities said his DNA matched the DNA left on a piece of fruit found inside Bain's home, a home that King said he never went inside.
Bain's family said hearing of the pain and suffering their relative went through was heart-wrenching.
"She was a good mom, a good grandmother, and she loved her grandsons, she loved her daughter-in-law, and she loved her two boys and she never quit being a mother," said Dana Telzer, Bain's son. "My mom died painfully. She was tortured. He gets to die a painless death, but that's the justice we choose and the justice I'll live by."
"It's not looking at (King) that gets me, it's looking at my family tear like seams on an old coat," Myles Telzer, Bain's grandson, added.