Jury deliberates life in prison or death for carjack killer

BOSTON – A jury has begun deliberating in the federal death penalty trial of a man convicted of carjacking and killing two Massachusetts men and a third man in New Hampshire during a weeklong crime rampage in 2001.

Jurors began deliberating Thursday in the sentencing retrial of Gary Lee Sampson.

Sampson, a drifter from Abington, Massachusetts, pleaded guilty to the killings and was sentenced to death in 2003, but a judge later granted him a new sentencing trial.

A new jury has spent the last two months listening to gruesome testimony about the fatal stabbings of 19-year-old Jonathan Rizzo of Kingston and 69-year-old Philip McCloskey of Taunton. They’ve also heard testimony about the killing of Robert “Eli” Whitney in New Hampshire. Sampson received a separate life sentence in Whitney’s murder.

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