Jury selection for Gallego trial begins

Gallego, who authorities say might have killed 10 people in a crime spree from 1978 to 1980, faces the death penalty for the murders of 17-year-olds, Karen Twiggs and Stacey Redican.

The teen-agers were abducted in 1980 from a Sacramento-area shopping mall, driven to a remote area of Pershing County, raped and then killed with blows to the head from a hammer.

Gallego was sentenced to death for the murders by a Pershing County jury in June 1984, but the penalty was overturned by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco in September 1997 after years of legal battles.

The appeals court ruled his death sentence was invalid because the judge wrongly suggested to the jury that Gallego might eventually be paroled if he was spared execution.

Gallego's convictions for the two Nevada killings were upheld.

Only the penalty, death or life in prison, is at issue in the hearing before visiting District Judge John McGroarty.

archive