Death Penalty Trial Resumes for Gary Lee Sampson, Convicted in 3 Grisly Murders

BOSTON, MA — The death penalty trial for convicted murderer Gary Lee Sampson resumes Wednesday morning in Boston.

The U.S. District Attorney's office said via Twitter the court will hear opening statement starting at 9 a.m., in federal court in Boston.

Sampson took two lives while hitch-hiking through Massachusetts in 2001. He killed Philip McCloskey, 69, of Taunton, and Kingston native Jonathan Rizzo, 19, after grabbing a ride in their cars, then tying up both and stabbing them to death in separate instances.

He later turned himself in to police, and admitted to both murders. Sampson separately pleaded guilty to the murder of a former New Hampshire city councilor, and an attack on a Vermont man.

A Boston federal court sentenced him to death by lethal injection, after his 2003 conviction. But in 2011, a federal judge decreed he was entitled to a new trial, due to juror misconduct in that previous case.

Now, the trial begins again, with prosecutors once more pushing for the death penatly amidst declining numbers in capital punishment nationwide.

If Sampson is executed, he would be the first person executed for a crime in Massachusetts since 1947, Patch previously reported. While Massachusetts law does not allow for the death penalty, Patch reported, Sampson was tried under federal law.

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