MANHATTAN, N.Y. (PIX11) — The jury deciding whether or not convicted terror suspect Sayfullo Saipov will live or die will reconvene Thursday morning.
The judge, along with prosecutors and defense attorneys, spent the morning refining instructions to the jury prior to them deciding whether or not he should be sentenced to death for killing eight people on Halloween in 2017. Saipov was found guilty weeks earlier by the same panel.
Debating, and then reading more than 40 pages of instructions took most of the day Wednesday. Jurors only deliberated for a few hours before calling it a night around 6 p.m.
The 12 jurists must before sentencing Saipov to death find any one of a number of preliminary intent factors and aggravating factors. Jurors must also work through a special verdict sheet that asked them to consider a range of other factors such as whether or not he would have killed more people had he been able, and if ISIS propaganda was partially to blame.
At the end of the day, the judge said this will be a moral call for each of the 12 jurors.
The panel is already thinking about the implications of their decision. Their first two questions to the judge while deliberating asked about if it would be appropriate to discuss lethal injection and Attorney General Merrick Garland‘s decision to put a moratorium on executions. The judge advised jurors those two topics would not be appropriate matters for discussion.
New York state does not have the death penalty, and the result of this federal trial could mean the first case of capital punishment in the Empire State in decades.
