Legal News

Alcala sentenced to death

By Richard Binder

During his closing remarks on Tuesday, Rodney Alcala asked the jury to forego the death penalty in favor of a life sentence. To do otherwise, he said, would make the jurors become "wannabe killer[s] in waiting." To underscore his point, Alcala played a portion of Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant" in which the protagonist tells a military psychiatrist about his desire to kill and "see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth."

It took the jury only a few hours to sentence Alcala to death. 

This will be the third such conviction for Alcala.  The last two convictions were overturned.  Alcala suggested during his remarks that a death sentence will only lead to appeals that could last up to 20 years.

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Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on March 10, 2010 (boomark / email).