Death penalty for PA anti-government cop killer

In this file photo, Eric Frein is escorted by police out the Pike County Courthouse after his arraignment in Milford, Pa., Friday Oct. 31, 2014. (Photo:Rich Schultz / AP)

In this file photo, Eric Frein is escorted by police out the Pike County Courthouse after his arraignment in Milford, Pa., Friday, Oct. 31, 2014. (Photo: Rich Schultz / AP)

A week after jurors found him guilty for the 2014 ambush of two state troopers, a Pennsylvania jury decided Wednesday anti-government survivalist Eric Frein should die for his crimes.

Frein, 33, gunned down Cpl. Bryon Dickson during a shift change at the Blooming Grove barracks in northeastern Pennsylvania on Sept. 12, 2014. Trooper Alex Douglass suffered a gunshot wound to the back as he tried to pull Dickson to safety.

Frein then led law enforcement on a 48-day manhunt through the Pocono Mountains until he was apprehended at an abandoned airstrip 30 miles from the barracks on Oct. 30, 2014.

Prosecutors called Frein a terrorist and said he ambushed the troopers in hopes of starting a revolution. Frein told investigators he chose the barracks in rural Pike County, about 30 miles south of the New York border, because of the desolate, mountain landscape surrounding it.

Last week, jurors found Frein guilty of murder, attempted murder, aggravated assault of a law enforcement officer, terrorism, possessing weapons of mass destruction, possessing an instrument of crime, recklessly endangering others and firing a gun into an occupied structure.

State Police Commissioner Col. Tyree Blocker thanked the jury Wednesday for delivering justice, according to ABC27 News.

The station reports Frein’s defense attorney told reporters he was “disappointed” and “surprised” by the jury’s decision.

In an attempt to spare his life, the defense cast the gunman’s father, Eugene Michael “Mike” Frein, as an abusive, domineering man who fostered his son’s anti-government views.

Prosecutors mocked the characterization and called it a poor deflection from the gunman’s “wickedness of heart” in what Pike County District Attorney Ray Tonkin described as a calculated and remorseless killing Wednesday.

The news station reports Frein’s lawyers will appeal the sentence.

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