Jury in Massachusetts Issues Death Sentence

In Massachusetts, which has no state death penalty law and where no one has been executed in more than half a century, a federal jury on Tuesday sentenced a drifter to die for the slayings of two men who had stopped to help after he feigned being a stranded motorist.

The verdict against Gary Sampson, 44, who murdered the two during separate carjackings during a weeklong crime spree in 2001, prompted opponents of capital punishment to again raise their argument that the death penalty is unjust because they say it is meted out differently to some killers and not others who committed similar crimes.

At the same time, supporters of the death penalty applauded the verdict, as well as prosecutors’ willingness to take the case to federal court in pursuit of a death sentence for a man both sides agreed was a vicious killer.

Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center -- which is critical of the way the death penalty is carried out but does not formally take a stand on the debate -- said such federal prosecutions may threaten the long-standing tradition of state and local independence in sentencing.

“Carjackings are bad crimes, especially when there’s a murder, but they do not threaten our security as a country,” Dieter said. “I don’t think it’s wise to remove sentencing [guidelines] from local jurisdictions ... to force something on a state where the people say they don’t want it. There’s this potential for a huge sort of death bureaucracy out of Washington.”

After the verdict was announced, U.S. Atty. Michael Sullivan said jurors had come to a fair conclusion despite “intense emotional pressure.”

Sampson’s lawyer, David Ruhnke, pledged to appeal. The last time Massachusetts executed a person was 1947, under a state law that allowed capital punishment. Massachusetts abolished its death penalty law in 1984.

During a wave of anti-crime legislation in the early 1990s, a 1994 law approved by Congress expanded the list of federal death penalty offenses to about 60, including for some murders committed during carjackings.

Local prosecutors in Boston, wanting Sampson to face death for killing Phillip McCloskey, 69, and Jonathan Rizzo, 19, took the case to federal court.

Sampson pleaded guilty to the slayings, and a jury was brought in only for the sentencing phase. In taped confessions, Sampson described how he tied Rizzo, a college student, to a tree, stuffed socks in his mouth to keep him from crying out, sprayed him with insect repellent and then stabbed him to death. He also repeatedly stabbed McCloskey, an ailing grandfather, Sampson said. Then “I slit his throat. Why, I do not know.”

After killing Rizzo, according to investigators and Sampson’s confession, he drove Rizzo’s car to a lakeside resort in Meredith, N.H., and broke into an empty home. When Robert “Eli” Whitney, 58, a neighbor appeared, Sampson murdered him. Sampson faces trial in New Hampshire for Whitney’s slaying.

His rampage ended a short time later in Vermont, when he allegedly tried to carjack another motorist at knifepoint. The driver escaped and Sampson surrendered to police.

Sampson’s attorneys argued that their client should not face death because he had been abused as a child, suffered from bipolar disorder and, most important, had tried to surrender to FBI agents before committing the murders.

He began his crime spree in July 2001 by robbing five banks in North Carolina, he later confessed. He said he returned to his home state of Massachusetts and called the Boston office of the FBI, asking agents to meet him so he could turn himself in.

Agents never showed up and an FBI clerk later denied having taken a call from Sampson. Investigators turned up phone records showing he had indeed made the call.