A judge to begin hearing motions challenging the constitutionality of the federal death penalty in the case of a man who confessed to carjacking and killing two men in Massachusetts and killing a third man in New Hampshire during a weeklong crime spree in 2001.
Gary Lee Sampson was sentenced to death, but U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf overturned that after finding that a juror’s lies about her background deprived Sampson of his right to an impartial jury.
Sampson’s sentencing re-trial is to begin in February.
Wolf has scheduled a hearing Wednesday on defense motions seeking to bar the death penalty, including one that argues it is unconstitutional to force the death penalty on citizens of a state that has rejected it. Massachusetts abolished the state death penalty in 1984.
