Robert Tucker, defense attorney for Brendt Christensen, heads to the federal courthouse building in Peoria, Illinois, the United States, on July 8, 2019. Sentencing phase for Brendt Christensen, who's ruled by a U.S. jury guilty of kidnapping and killing a visiting scholar from China in 2017, started on Monday at 1:30 p.m. local time (1830 GMT) at a federal courthouse in Peoria, U.S. state of Illinois. (Xinhua/Wang Ping)