06 February 2017 :

US District Judge Leo T. Sorokin Formally Sentenced Gary Lee Sampson to Death. The federal judge sentenced the spree killer a month after a jury did. On January 09, 2017 (see) in Boston a federal jury sentenced Sampson, 57, White, to death for the murder of two men in 2001. Sampson took 2 lives while hitchhiking through Massachusetts. He later turned himself in to police and admitted to both murders. He was sentenced to death for the murder of Jonathan Rizzo (19). In addition, Sampson received an automatic life term for the murder of Philip McCloskey, 69, because the jury could not come to a unanimous verdict. It was Sampson's 2nd death penalty case following his 2001 killing spree. Sampson was sentenced to death in 2003 (see 23/12/2003 and 29/01/2004) for the same facts after he pleaded guilty, but on October 20, 2011 (see) Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf threw out the death penalty against Sampson, and ordered a new trial. Judge Wolf was the same judge who sentenced Sampson in 2004. The federal judge ruled that Sampson was denied his constitutional right to have his sentence decided by an impartial jury because 3 jurors had given inaccurate answers to questions they were asked during the jury selection process. Sampson separately pleaded guilty to the murder of Robert "Eli" Whitney and an attack on a Vermont man within the same week. In 2003 Sampson was also convicted of killing Robert "Eli" Whitney, but because he was not carjacked, that particular killing is not punishable by death. Although Massachusetts law does not allow for the death penalty, Sampson was tried under federal law. If executed, he would be the 1st person killed for a crime in Massachusetts since 1947. He is the first to receive the federal death sentence since Boston Marathon bomber Dzokhar Tsarnaev in 2015.