Omar Sharif Cash - already serving life for a Bucks County carjacking that ended in the murder of a man and rape of his fiancee - was sentenced to death Friday by a Philadelphia jury for the 2008 execution-style slaying of a man outside a Frankford car wash.
The Common Pleas Court jury of 10 women and 2 men, which took 35 minutes to find Cash guilty of first-degree murder on Nov. 7, spent barely 90 minutes to sentence him to death by lethal injection.
As the jury's announced its decision, Cash, 31, blinked his eyes rapidly, his mouth drawn into a half-grimace half-smile.
Cash did not apologize or comment on the April 21, 2008, slaying of 19-year-old Muliek Ronald Brown before Judge Sandy L.V. Byrd formally imposed the death sentence.
Under Pennsylvania law, Cash's conviction and sentence is automatically appealed to the state Supreme Court.
Cash will now be transferred to the state prison in Rockview, where executions take place, and will be confined to a cell for 23 hours a day.
Attorney Earl G. Kauffman, who with Lee Mandell defended Cash, said Cash rejected plea offers from the District Attorney's office that would have spared him from the death penalty.
"We did everything we could," Kauffman said, referring to negotiations between defense and prosecution. "The only person who stopped us from de-deathifying this case was him."
Kauffman had asked the jury to sentence Cash to life without parole, citing Cash's "atrocious childhood" - child of alcoholic-drug users, abandoned at age 6 and institutionalized by age 10.
The jury said it agreed with Kauffman's description of Cash's personal history but those facts did not outweigh his long history of violent crime.
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer, November 16, 2013
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