Jury sentences Arizona "serial shooter" to death
Fri Mar 27, 2009 4:30pm EDT
By David Schwartz
PHOENIX (Reuters) - A jury sentenced an Arizona man known as the "Serial Shooter" to death Friday for murdering six people in a killing spree that terrorized Phoenix area residents three years ago.
A Maricopa County Superior Court jury sentenced Dale Hausner, 36, to die by lethal injection for gunning down four men and two women during a 14-month shooting rampage that ended with his arrest in August 2006, together with an accomplice.
Hausner showed no emotion as the jury's decision was announced in the court in downtown Phoenix. An appeal is mandatory.
Earlier this month, Hausner was convicted of the six murders and 74 other crimes committed in night-time drive-by shootings of people and animals in 2005 and 2006.
Hausner, a former janitor, told the jury Thursday he should receive the death penalty. But he did not confess to the killings.
Still to be sentenced is his accomplice and roommate Samuel Dieteman, who pleaded guilty to two murder charges and testified against Hausner during the six-month trial.
Hausner and Dieteman were taken into custody after an exhaustive investigation by police, arrests that attracted nationwide attention.
Police found newspaper clippings of the spree and a map with crimes plotted on it during the arrest at the apartment shared by the two men in Mesa, Arizona, east of Phoenix. Guns were also found at the residence.
The Serial Shooter case was one of two high-profile crime sprees that terrorized those living in the nation's fifth-largest city in 2006.
(Writing by Tim Gaynor; editing by Todd Eastham)
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