Ronell Wilson, a New York City street gang member, was convicted and sentenced to death for the second time on Wednesday for the execution-style killings of two undercover detectives in 2003, CBS News reported. Wilson's original death sentenced had been overturned in a long-drawn case that also involved an illicit affair with a prison guard, which resulted in fathering her child.
The new death sentence was announced in federal court court in Brooklyn.
"Today, a jury of his peers looked at Ronell Wilson, everything he did and all that he is, and rendered justice," U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch said in a statement.
In 2007, the first jury had also found Wilson guilty and sentenced to die for the point-blank shootings of undercover officers James Nemorin and Rodney Andrews who posedas gun buyers during an attempted sting operation in Staten Island. An appeals court, however, threw out the death sentence in 2010 because of an error in jury instructions. Prosecutors sought to repeat the penalty phase rather than let the defendant serve an automatic life sentence without parole, news reports said.
Last year, after a hearing that lasted several weeks, US District Judge Nicholas Garaufis ruled that Wilson was not mentally retarded and was therefore eligible for the death penalty. Also, in this past February, a prison guard pleaded guilty to having sex with Wilson after he was transferred from federal death row in Indiana to a Brooklyn lock up facility to await the proceedings. She said at the time that she "wanted to be loved."
Prosecutors had cited a piece of paper with lyrics from a rap song Wilson was carrying when he was arrested as proof that he is a cold-blooded killer. If he ever was to be crossed, the song lyric went, he would put "45 slogs in da back of ya head" and "ain't goin to stop to Im dead."
While the defense conceded that Wilson committed a murderous crime in killing two police officers in cold-blood, his team tried to focus jurors to his background as the product of a crack-addicted mother living in a crime-infested housing project, news reports said.
New York's highest state court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in 2004. Despite the state ban on capital punishment, federal prosecutors are still permitted to seek executions for federal cases. 1954 marks the last time a federal defendant was executed in New York.
