Jurors on Wednesday recommended a death sentence for a California sex offender who abducted and killed four women over six months while wearing an electronic monitoring device.
A judge is to make the final decision on Feb. 3 after a jury said Steven Dean Gordon, 47, should face capital punishment for his crimes.
The recommendation came a few minutes after Orange County Superior Court Judge Patrick Donahue considered dismissing a juror who told colleagues during deliberations that she could not vote for the death penalty.
After interviewing the woman, Donahue indicated that he believed she was not heeding her promise to deliberate based on the evidence.
Gordon, who represented himself, wanted her removed from the jury.
“I think if she stayed and with the other 11 voted death, the case is going to be overturned and I don’t want that,” he told the judge. “I think you need to remove her.”
However, a few minutes later, the jury announced it had reached a decision.
Gordon, who confessed his role in the killings to police, was convicted last week of murdering four women with ties to prostitution in 2012 and 2013.
Jurors found special circumstances of murder during a kidnapping and multiple murders, making him eligible for the death penalty.
One of the victim’s bodies was found at a recycling center in Anaheim and investigators later tied the case to the earlier disappearance of three other women in Southern California. Their bodies have never been found.
Authorities say Gordon was wearing a GPS tracking device for prior offenses during three of the slayings and carried them out with fellow sex offender Franc Cano, 30, who is being tried separately.
Cano has pleaded not guilty.
The men drove around randomly targeting the women, then abducted and killed them, authorities said.
During the investigation, police identified the victim at the recycling plant as 21-year-old Jarrae Nykkole Estepp from the tattoo on the back of her neck.
They searched a database of sex offenders wearing tracking devices and found Cano had been in the locations of all four women when they vanished.
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