Idaho jury sentences serial child killer to death

By Megan Cooley

SPOKANE, Washington (Reuters) - A federal jury in Idaho sentenced Joseph Duncan on Wednesday to death for shooting to death a 9-year-old boy in front of his younger sister after kidnapping and sexually abusing the boy.

A 12-member jury in Boise, Idaho handed down the sentence in a unanimous vote after a two-week trial during which prosecutors presented gruesome evidence that painted Duncan, 45, as a predator who carefully planned the kidnapping, sexual abuse, torture and murder of his young victims.

"I haven't seen anything that comes close to the horrendous facts that were presented in this case," U.S. Attorney Tom Moss said after the sentencing. "Absolutely, justice was served."

Duncan pleaded guilty in December to federal charges surrounding the 2005 kidnapping and molestation of siblings Shasta and Dylan Groene from Coeur d'Alene, Idaho and the torture and murder of Dylan.

Jurors were shown video recorded by Duncan as he sexually abused and tortured the boy, hanging him from a wire noose. Eventually, Duncan shot Dylan in the abdomen, wounding him, before shooting him in the head at point-blank range, while Shasta watched.

The federal case focused mostly on the crimes against Dylan, but Duncan previously pleaded guilty in state court to the bludgeoning deaths of the children's mother, Brenda Groene, her boyfriend, Mark McKenzie, and their older brother, Slade Groene, on the night Shasta and Dylan were kidnapped.

Duncan also faces a first-degree murder charge in Riverside County, California for the 1997 kidnapping and murder of Anthony Martinez, who was 10 when he was forced into a car at knifepoint by a man asking for help finding his cat.

The boy's body was found two weeks later, his hands and mouth bound with duct tape. A partial fingerprint on the tape matched Duncan's prints.

Riverside County District Attorney Rod Pacheco said Monday he planned to extradite Duncan to California regardless of the outcome of the federal trial.

Duncan, who represented himself during the Boise trial, has confessed to Martinez's murder as well as the 1996 slayings of Carmen Cubias, 9, and Sammiejo White, 11, in Seattle.

Prosecutors presented evidence from those crimes during the federal trial to convince jurors of the threat Duncan would pose should he have been allowed to live.

Death sentences are less common in federal cases.

From 1996 to 2006, federal juries issued 40 death sentences, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, compared to 704 death sentences handed down in state courts during that period.

(Editing by Daisuke Wakabayashi and Eric Walsh)