PHOENIX — A man convicted of six murders in Phoenix’s Serial Shooter attacks told jurors Thursday that they should sentence him to death to help the families of victims heal.
Dale Shawn Hausner spoke to jurors for nearly half an hour in an often rambling speech during which he said the Hausner name would likely become as infamous as serial killer Charles Manson’s.
Hausner, 36, also apologized to the families of every victim in the Serial Shooter attacks, including the dogs and horses. Hausner did not, however, admit to committing any killings.
“I’m not up here to point the finger at anybody else and say, ‘Have mercy on my poor and withered soul,”‘ Hausner said. “I’m willing to accept my punishment like a man without blaming anybody.
“I ask that you guys, if it’s convenient, to look at the picture of each and every person who had been shot, hurt, killed, mangled, and I ask that you guys do the right thing,” Hausner said. “What is right is to have justice for the victims, plain and simple.”
Hausner declined the opportunity to call witnesses to ask jurors for leniency on his behalf.
The jurors began deliberating whether to sentence Hausner to death Thursday afternoon after hearing from him and Prosecutor Vince Imbordino argue for the death penalty.
“This defendant should know, unlike his victims, when he’s going to die,” Imbordino said. “If he survives long enough to be executed, he should know the day and the hour, and he should know it’s coming, which will happen if he’s executed, and I really cannot think of anything more appropriate in this case.”
Earlier in the day, jurors heard emotional testimony from survivors of some of the six people Hausner was convicted of killing. One juror could be seen crying during the testimony.
“From that moment, I felt like my world had come to a halt,” Adriana Cruz said of the moment she learned her younger sister, 21-year-old Claudia Gutierrez Cruz, had died after she was shot on a Scottsdale street as she was going home from her restaurant job.
Rebecca Estrada, whose 20-year-old son David Estrada was shot to death in Tolleson in June 2005, described her heartache to jurors and said her son was a beautiful young man whose life was cut short suddenly. “I can’t tell you the devastation and the emptiness that we all feel about David,” Estrada said.
Nearly two weeks ago, Hausner was convicted of killing six people and attacking 19 others in random nighttime shootings that terrorized metro Phoenix in 2005 and 2006.
Prosecutors say Hausner preyed on pedestrians, bicyclists, dogs and horses in the attacks. When police raided Hausner’s apartment in Mesa, they found guns, news clippings of the killings and a map marked with the locations of some of the shootings. Investigators said Hausner attacked people from his car in a conspiracy that occasionally included his brother, Jeff Hausner, and his former roommate, Samuel Dieteman.
Dieteman, the star prosecution witness, is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to two of the killings. Dieteman could face the death penalty.