Earlier this month, Palm Beach County prosecutors announced that they would be seeking the death penalty against two men accused of repeatedly sexually abusing a 6-year-old girl, crimes they described as “the most horrific imaginable” and worthy of the most severe punishment.

But the road to that punishment — which could be one of the first death sentences for a non-homicide criminal case in the U.S. since the 1970s — is uncertain and unprecedented.

The girl was 7 when she told her babysitters that her father, Josue Mendez-Sales, and his roommate, Pablo Cobon-Mendez, had raped her every day, according to a probable cause affidavit. In interviews with West Palm Beach Police, the men admitted to assaulting her. They are now two of the first defendants facing capital punishment for child se

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