Wednesday, Oct. 21, 1998 | 5:35 a.m.
RENO, Nev. -- Convicted sex-slave killer Gerald Gallego will return to a rural Nevada courtroom in January, when a new jury will decide if he should die for killing two Sacramento teen-agers 18 years ago.
The new penalty hearing, ordered by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, is scheduled to begin Jan. 11, the Pershing County Clerk's Office confirmed Wednesday.
Because both Pershing County district judges were involved in the prosecution of Gallego at his 1984 trial, the state Supreme Court appointed District Judge John McGroarty of Las Vegas to preside over the proceeding.
Gallego, 52, was convicted in Lovelock, 90 miles east of Reno, in 1984 for the killings of Karen Twiggs and Stacey Redican. The two young women disappeared from a Sacramento shopping mall in April 1980. Their bodies were found three months later in a remote Pershing County canyon.
During his trial, his accomplice, Charlene Williams, testified Gallego was looking for "the perfect sex slave." Williams said she helped lure a number of victims into cars between 1978 and 1980 with promises of parties or jobs.
Williams confessed to taking part in 10 murders, including six that were never charged. She was released from prison last year.
Gallego also faces execution in California, where he was convicted of the November 1980 murders of a Sacramento-area couple.
In the Nevada case, numerous appeals filed by Gallego have been rejected by state and federal courts. In 1993, U.S. District Judge Howard McKibben rejected a petition in which Gallego raised 40 claims for relief.
That ruling was appealed to the 9th Circuit, which last year upheld McKibben on all grounds but one.
The appellate court determined Gallego was entitled to a new sentencing hearing because jurors were given improper instructions regarding the possibility of his eventually being pardoned for the crimes.
McKibben in July then imposed a 180-day time limit for the new sentencing hearing to be held.
In February, the Nevada Attorney General's Office sought to have Gallego's death sentence reinstated. But its petition arrived late at the U.S. Supreme Court when an employee in the state mail room sent the package of legal filings by United Parcel Service instead of first-class mail, and the court refused to consider the matter.
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