Gary Lee Sampson Formally Sentenced to Death

Gary Lee Sampson was formally sentenced to death Friday morning by a federal judge.

Sampson, who went on a killing spree in Massachusetts and New Hampshire in 2001 that resulted in the deaths of three people, had been sentenced by a jury in January.

Sampson chose not to speak at the hearing, but a report from WBZ says Sampson yelled an expletive before exiting the courtroom.

Sampson, of Abington, took two lives while hitchhiking through Massachusetts in 2001. He killed Philip McCloskey, 69, of Taunton, and Kingston native Jonathan Rizzo, 19, after grabbing a ride in their cars. He tied up both and stabbed them to death in separate instances within a three-day span.

He later turned himself in to police and admitted to both murders. Sampson separately pleaded guilty to the murder of a former New Hampshire city councilor and an attack on a Vermont man within the same week.

Sampson was sentenced to death by lethal injection after those convictions in 2003, but that verdict was scrapped by a federal judge in 2011 due to juror misconduct.

A 12-member federal jury sentenced him to death a second time in January for the murder of Rizzo and gave him a life sentence for the death of McCloskey.

Sampson's trial resumed this November, and jurors have been deliberating since Thursday as the defense pushed for life in prison rather than capital punishment.

Although Massachusetts law does not allow for the death penalty, Sampson was tried under federal law. If executed, he would be the first person killed for a crime in Massachusetts since 1947.

He is the first to receive the federal death sentence since Boston Marathon bomber Dzokhar Tsarnaev in 2015. Tsarnaev is currently appealing.

Alison Bauter contributed to this report