Gary Sampson, 44, who confessed to carjacking and killing...

Gary Sampson, 44, who confessed to carjacking and killing 2 men during a weeklong crime spree was sentenced to death by a federal jury. If the sentence is carried out, he would be the 1st person executed in a Massachusetts case in more than a half-century. Sampson received a death sentence for the murder of Philip McCloskey, 69. The jury had not immediately announced its verdict in the murder of Jonathan Rizzo, 19. Sampson pleaded guilty in September to killing McCloskey and Rizzo several days apart in July 2001, after each man picked him up hitchhiking. Massachusetts last executed someone in 1947 under the state death penalty in effect at the time. The state abolished capital punishment in 1984. Prosecutors pursued the case against Sampson in federal court under a federal law allowing the death penalty when a murder is committed during a carjacking.