Defending Against Death Penalty, Convicted Murder's Defense Makes Its Case 115 Ways

BOSTON, MA — More than a decade after his original conviction and after time spent on death row, Gary Lee Sampson's fate was back before a jury Wednesday, where attorneys laid out a lengthy defense to win life in prison, rather than capital punishment, for a man convicted of killing three.

The trial resumed in November, and jurors are expected to begin deliberating Thursday.

Sampson, of Abington, 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. He was separately sentenced to life in prison for the New Hampshire murder.

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 reaches its conclusion, with prosecutors once more pushing for the death penalty amid declining numbers in capital punishment nationwide. Jurors will deliberate to decide whether Sampson will return to death row or be relegated to life in prison.

The defense on Wednesday afternoon outlined a 115-point list of "mitigating factors" they hope will spare Sampson the death penalty, a largely unprecedented number that centered around his multiple traumatic brain injuries and touched on past abusive environments, dyslexia, addiction and more.

Prosecutors showed pictures and described in gruesome detail the premeditated murders, WBZ reports, citing Sampson's violent behavior in prison as further justification for capital punishment.

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

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