Highway Sniper Faces New Trial

Prosecutors on Tuesday said they will not seek the death penalty when they retry the man who admitted to a highway shooting spree that left one woman dead and terrorized commuters.

Evidence of Charles McCoy Jr.'s severe mental illness presented at the first trial would outweigh any evidence that would support a death sentence, prosecutor Ron O'Brien said after meeting with defense attorneys and the judge.

"Based on what I know now, taking the death penalty out of the indictment is the appropriate thing to do," O'Brien said.

A hung jury was declared Sunday after four days of deliberations in the trial of McCoy, 29, charged with 12 shootings over five months in 2003 and 2004. The defense had acknowledged he was the shooter but argued he was innocent by reason of insanity.

McCoy could have faced the death penalty if convicted of the most serious charge of aggravated murder for the one person killed, Gail Knisley. O'Brien said he spoke on Monday with Knisley's relatives and said they would accept a prison sentence rather than execution.

The jury was consistently split 8-4 in favor of conviction in all three votes, with four jurors convinced that McCoy was insane at the time of the crimes, The Columbus Dispatch reported Tuesday, citing jurors and other unidentified sources.

"It was kind of like a pressure cooker," juror Charles Hagar said. "As the days went on, the pressure was tremendous."

However, defense attorney Michael Miller said on Monday that a second trial would not be any easier without the death penalty.

"I never thought there was a jury in America that would execute Charles," he said.

No trial date has been set. Prosecutors and defense attorneys have said they remain open to negotiating a plea agreement that would require prison. If a trial jury found McCoy innocent by reason of insanity, he would be sent to a mental hospital.

Residents and commuters were frightened for months as bullets struck vehicles and houses at varying times of day and night along or near Interstate 270, the highway that encircles Columbus. Knisley, 62, was killed Nov. 25, 2003, as a friend drove her to a doctor's appointment.

McCoy's attorneys insisted he did not understand his actions were wrong because of delusions from his untreated paranoid schizophrenia. However, the prosecution's psychiatrist said that, despite the delusions, McCoy showed he knew his actions were wrong by steps he took to avoid capture.