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Split Second Circuit panel reverses death sentence for NYC double cop killer

By Douglas A. Berman

As detailed in this New York Times report, which is headlined "Death Sentence Is Voided for Killer of 2 N.Y.P.D. Officers," the Second Circuit today has reversed a high-profile federal death sentence. Here are the basics: A panel of federal judges has overturned the death sentence given to a Staten Island man convicted of killing two undercover New York City police detectives in 2003. In January 2007, when a federal jury sentenced the man, Ronell Wilson, to die by lethal injection for killing the detectives, the verdict was praised by prosecutors and the president of the Detectives Endowment Association. Relatives of the two detectives ? each shot in the back of the head in a car on a dead-end street on Staten Island in 2003 after posing as gun buyers ? called out ?God bless? after the jury foreman ordered sentences of death on five counts, the first successful federal capital punishment prosecution in New York State in more than 50 years...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on June 30, 2010 (boomark / email).