Pershing County gets six months for death penalty hearing

District Attorney Belinda Quilici said Wednesday that U.S. District Judge Howard McKibben set the 180-day time limit.

The first order of business will be to find a judge to hear the new penalty phase proceeding, ordered in a decision last year by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Both Pershing County district judges were involved in the prosecution of Gallego at his 1984 trial, so the state Supreme Court must appoint a judge.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the new penalty hearing for Gallego because jurors got improper instructions regarding the possibility of his eventually being pardoned for the crimes. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene.

Gallego, now 52, was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1980 sex-slave killings of two Sacramento-area girls, Karen Twiggs and Stacey Redican. The two were abducted from a Sacramento, Calif., mall and found dead in a remote Pershing County canyon.

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