Strip killer Ammar Harris sentenced to death

Ammar Harris was sentenced to death Wednesday for each of the three people he killed on the Las Vegas Strip.

A jury of eight women and four men, which took about two hours to decide the sentence, found 10 aggravating factors that contributed to his punishment and no mitigating circumstances that should have spared his life.

Last week, the same jury convicted Harris of 11 charges, including three counts of first-degree murder for the February 2013 slayings. Harris refused to appear in court this week for the three days of testimony and argument during the penalty hearing.

Prosecutors said Harris pulled alongside Kenneth Cherry Jr.'s car on the Strip and fired a bullet that plowed through the 27-year-old's vital organs, killing him. Cherry's Maserati then slammed into a taxi, causing an explosion that killed driver Michael Boldon, 62, and his passenger, Sandra Sutton-Wasmund, 48, a mother of three from Washington. A passenger in Cherry's Maserati suffered a minor gunshot wound.

"The conduct of Ammar Harris was reckless and callous and unthinking toward any other people," prosecutor Pamela Weckerly told jurors.

Tehran Boldon, the cab driver's brother who has followed Harris through court since his arrest, wept as a court clerk read off a sentence of death for each of the victims.

"My faith in human nature is restored," he said. "I didn't know what to think throughout the whole trial. My brother deserved to live, and Ammar deserves to die."

Shanna Cherry, a cousin of Kenneth Cherry Jr., said the trial had been too difficult for Kenneth Cherry Sr. to attend the sentencing decision.

Her husband, Trevor Carson said Kenneth Cherry Jr. "had a good heart" and was always willing to help friends.

Cherry's three young children are "going to grow up without a father, but they're going to get justice," Carson said.

The prosecutor said the jury's decision "validates" what the family of the victims have endured.

Defense lawyer Robert Langford, who had argued that Harris was acting in self-defense when he fired from a .40-caliber handgun, had asked jurors for a sentence of "something less than the death penalty."

As a standard legal procedure, death penalty sentences are appealed.

"It's a long process between now and his execution," Langford said. "Death penalty cases always get the strictest scrutiny. And I've seen cleaner death penalty cases overturned."

Jurors who deliberated the case declined to speak with reporters. But Pedro Virrueta, an alternate who heard all the testimony of the trial without participating in deliberations, said he would not have voted for the death penalty.

"I don't think Ammar is one of the worst of the worst," Virrueta said.

Judge Kathleen Delaney is scheduled to impose the sentence in January, when she also is expected to issue a sentence on eight other charges against Harris.

Jurors had four options in a sentence: death, life in prison without parole, life with a chance at parole, or 50 years in prison.

Prosecutor David Stanton had asked jurors in closing arguments to consider the three lives that were taken.

Anyone given a sentence of life in prison without parole "must have some cognition, some recognition for the rest of their life, as they sit in prison, of what they did, the damage that they caused, the pain that they inflicted," he argued. "Because if it doesn't exist, then it's not punishment. ...In a year, or maybe even less, Ammar Harris, probably is not even going to remember the victims' names."

Contact David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Find him on Twitter: @randompoker