A Washington state jury says a man convicted of killing the family of a National Guard sergeant who was serving in Iraq, then burning down the house in an attempt to conceal the crime, should be sentenced to death.
The King County Superior Court jury's decision was read by Judge Gregory Canova on Wednesday and was met by silence in the courtroom.
Conner Schierman was convicted last month of four counts of aggravated first-degree murder and one count of arson in the 2006 stabbing deaths of 28-year-old Olga Milkin, her two young sons and her sister.
No clear motive ever emerged from the trial.
The 28-year-old Schierman has said he had an alcoholic blackout, only to wake up in the Milkins' neighboring Kirkland home covered in blood with no idea of what happened.
| Mr. Schierman has a pretty effective subconscious then, able to plan, act, and plan and act some more. I vote we send his subconscious to the electric chair for what it did. Mr. Schierman himself ought to go free, as he was a passenger in his own body, locked in a windowless back room far from the controls. |
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