Juror says Sampson inspired little sympathy during trial

But the deliberations, despite their historic significance, were anything but dramatic, according to a juror interviewed yesterday.

There were no sudden changes of heart, no heated arguments, and no passionate pleas to spare Sampson's life, juror Robert Saulnier told the Globe.

Federal prosecutors made such a compelling case for the death penalty, he said, that the deliberations were nearly one-sided.

"To us, the jury itself, I believe the government . . . the prosecutor . . . proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that what he did did not deserve life in prison," said Saulnier, 60, a Somerville resident and longtime Raytheon employee.

"We were hoping for an opening" to grant leniency, he continued. "We glanced at him a few times. He showed no remorse. Nothing."

Sampson, 44, a drifter who grew up in Abington, was convicted Dec. 23 of kidnapping and murdering Jonathan Rizzo, 19, of Kingston, and Philip McCloskey, 69, of Taunton, during a single week in July 2001. He is also charged in New Hampshire with murdering a Penacook, N.H., man that same week.

A federal jury of nine women and three men, whose names were released by US District Judge Mark L. Wolf, unanimously rejected Sampson's claim he was mentally ill at the time of the murders.

Mary E. Dever, the jury forewoman, said last week following the verdict that jurors concluded that Sampson deserved the maximum penalty allowed under federal law: death by lethal injection.

Saulnier echoed those sentiments in an interview at his home.

Sampson "told the cops that he was going to beat the death penalty," Saulnier said. "For what he did, there was no way."

Though jurors based their verdict on the facts of the case -- Sampson stabbed and slashed Rizzo and McCloskey after each picked him up hitchhiking -- Saulnier said he believed jurors were also moved by how few supporters Sampson had in court during the trial.

One of the mitigating factors that jurors were allowed to consider was the impact that Sampson's death would have on others.

"One of the questions was, `Do you think anyone in Gary Sampson's family would show grief or loss?' I myself said no," Saulnier said, noting that only Sampson's ex-wife and a family friend testified for the defense. "If they had more people show up for him, it might have been a different story."

In contrast, several members of the victims' families took the witness stand, often sobbing as they told of their grief and pain.

"I prayed every day, `Is it right to take a life?' " said Saulnier, a devout Roman Catholic. "But if you gave him life, you're telling the Rizzos and the McCloskeys that their loved ones' lives were" meaningless.

As for the defense argument that Sampson was abused as a child and was mentally ill during the attacks, Saulnier said he just couldn't buy it.

"He planned these things out. If he was supposedly mentally ill or bipolar, he wouldn't be able to do that," he said.

Though Sampson called the FBI the day before the first murder to surrender to bank robbery charges he faced in North Carolina -- only to have the call accidentally disconnected -- and eventually did turn himself in to Vermont authorities, Saulnier said those actions did not merit a more lenient sentence.

"All he needed to do was go to the FBI. He could go to the police station. He didn't do it. If he did, it would be a different story," Saulnier said.

"If I could say anything to him, the only thing I would say is, `Why?' When it comes down to it, you really have a choice," Saulnier said. "He didn't have to do what he did. That's what he picked to do."