for the 2nd time since a jury recommended that former state trooper George Martin be sentenced to life...

for the 2nd time since a jury recommended that former state trooper George Martin be sentenced to life without parole for burning his wife to death for money, a judge has condemned him to death. The hearing Friday before Mobile County Circuit Judge Ferrill McRae was the result of a ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court late last year, ordering McRae to reconsider his July 2000 death sentence of Martin. Martin, now 47, had been convicted two months before of the October 1995 killing of his 33-year-old wife, Hammoleketh Jackson Martin, for insurance money.
After the eight-day capital murder trial, jurors in an 8-4 decision recommended that Martin be sentenced to life without parole. But McRae, citing evidence that Hammoleketh Martin was burned alive and declaring that such treatment of another human being was the definition of "heinous, atrocious or cruel," overrode the jury's recommendation.
Last year, the high court ordered McRae to reconsider his sentence and to keep in mind that the jury's recommendation should be deemed a "mitigating" factor when balancing the weight of Martin's crime with its aggravating elements. On Friday, McRae announced he had done what the high court had asked of him, and had again determined that "death is the only appropriate sentence."