Jorge Garcia was sen-tenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole Friday for killing 7-year-old Erika Ar-royo.

The all-white 12-member jury was the same panel that found Garcia guilty of aggravated murder last month. They took about three hours to reach their decision in the courtroom of 2nd District Judge Pamela Heffernan. The family of Erika started crying when the sentence was read.Defense attorney John Caine said he was relieved after the sentence was read. "I think this is the right verdict," he said.

The attorney agreed with the prosection that his client had committed a brutal murder but said that Garcia could go to prison and be rehabilitated.

"There is no victory in this case," he added.

Weber County Deputy Attorney Bill Daines had no comment concerning the jury's unanimous sentence.

Garcia, 25, confessed to killing the victim on Aug. 25, 1997, in his apartment after his wife and child had left. An autopsy report revealed the girl had been beaten about the face and chest before she was raped and sodomized.

While the jury was out, Mexican Consul Eduardo H. Moguel Flores, who works out of Salk Lake City, said that if Garcia received the death penalty, he might file a friend of the court brief during the appeals process.

Flores, a lawyer, sat through the trial and the two-day sentencing hearing and said he may take that action because Garcia is a Mexican national and that his country opposes the death penalty. Mexico has no death penalty.

In closing argument, Daines said that Garcia should receive the death penalty because aggravating circumstances outweigh mitigating circumstances in this case.

The prosecutor said that aggravating circumstances included rape and sodomy, kidnaping and abuse of a child under the age of 14.

"This man murdered a little girl. This is the nature of this crime. It was a brutal murder. This is about the worst thing you can do," Daines told the jury. "There's nothing a 7-year-old girl can do to deserve this."

Daines said that testimony during the trial by psychiatrists show that Garcia suffered from no mental illnesses. He did admit, however, that Garcia was addicted to alcohol and cocaine and said the defendant had been drinking and taking cocaine before he killed Erika.

The lawyer told the jury in graphic detail how Erika died and told the members to look through the eyes of the victim to see what had happened to her and experience what she went through.