The jury in the trial of convicted Washington-area sniper John Muhammad has recommended that he be sentenced to death for one of 10 fatal shootings that terrorised the US capital last year.
The jury failed to agree on Friday on whether Muhammad should live or die for his crimes. The panel of seven women and five men broke off death penalty deliberations in Virginia Beach city after a half-day session and reconvened today.
The judge can reduce the recommendation to life imprisonment without parole.
The jury found Muhammad - a 42-year-old former US soldier -guilty last Monday of two capital murder counts, conspiracy and a weapons charge in the death of Dean Meyers, a Maryland man who was gunned down at a gas station outside Manassas, in Washington's Virginia suburbs.
The murder counts include one of multiple murder, involving Meyers's death and one other killing within a three-year period, and one of murder committed as an act of terrorism, a provision of a Virginia anti-terrorism law enacted after the September 11th, 2001 hijack attacks.