Life or death for cop killers in jury’s hands

A Philadelphia Common Pleas Court jury has ended a second day of deliberations without deciding whether Eric DeShann Floyd and Levon T. Warner should be executed or spend life in prison without parole for the 2008 killing of police Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski.

The jury of seven men and five women spent a full-day working Monday and four hours Friday. They broke their session twice to ask Judge Renee Cardwell Hughes for additional help in the decision process.

The death penalty decision involves a complex process in which the jurors must weigh what are known as aggravating factors for the death penalty or mitigating factors for life in prison.

The jury is to resume its deliberations Tuesday at 12:30 p.m., a delay caused by one juror's medical appointment.

On July 28, the jury women found Floyd, 35, and Warner, 41, guilty of first-degree murder in the May 3, 2008, shooting of Liczbinski, 39, a 12-year-veteran police officer, following a Port Richmond bank robbery.

Three aggravating factors warranting death are relevant: the premeditated killing of an officer on duty, endangering the public while committing a murder, and the two men's long histories of violent crimes.

Among the mitigating factors: the pair's confessions and the influence of deprived childhoods in environments of alcohol and drug use, crime, and emotional and physical abuse.

The jury must be unanimous in sentencing either defendant to death. Anything less will result in a life term.

Liczbinski was killed as he pursued a car occupied by three fleeing bank robbers. At Almond and Schiller Streets, Howard Cain got out of the car and began shooting at Liczbinski's patrol car, hitting the sergeant eight times and mortally wounding him.

Cain, 33, the trio's leader, was killed later that day when confronted by police.

Although neither Floyd nor Warner fired a shot that day, the jury used conspiracy law to find both as culpable as Cain in Liczbinski's death.