We didn't even have this on the news - it's all been the Queen Mum. nt

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: : From the Dallas Morning News: : : Killer of gas clerk gets death penalty : : Family of victim in Sept. 11 retaliation is happy with sentence : : 04/05/2002 : : By TIM WYATT / The Dallas Morning News : : A Dallas County jury handed the death penalty Thursday to a Dallas man who claimed that a series of shootings last fall that killed two immigrants and maimed another were retaliation for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. : : Mark Anthony Stroman, 33, received the death sentence after three days of trial testimony and less than four hours of jury deliberations for the Oct. 4 robbery and slaying of Vasudev Patel, a 49-year-old gas station attendant in Mesquite. : : As state District Judge Henry Wade Jr. read the verdict, Mr. Stroman nodded his head and then said: "Thank you, sir." He waved briefly at family members while being led out of the courtroom. : : Mr. Stroman also is charged with two Dallas shootings that killed convenience store owner Waqar Hasan, 46, on Sept. 15, and blinded Rais Bhuiyan in one eye at a Pleasant Grove gas station a week later. Mr. Stroman was not on trial in the September shootings but confessed to all three after his Oct. 5 arrest by Mesquite police. : : The widows of Mr. Patel and Mr. Hasan left the court without commenting. A family member, John Patel, said that his family was "very happy with the verdict" and that the brutality of the killings called for the death penalty. : : Teressa Talamantez said her brother-in-law "didn't do right" by attacking the three men, "but now [Mr. Stroman's] children are victims of this." : : "It's just more sadness," Ms. Talamantez said. "American justice failed again. It's just not right." : : Prosecutor Greg Davis said the attacks were committed out of "pure hatred" that claimed two lives and devastated victims' families. : : Mr. Stroman "attempted to say he was a patriot," Mr. Davis said. "He was anything but a patriot. What he is, is just a common vigilante." : : 'Chaotic mind' : : : : Defense attorney Jim Oatman had no comment after the verdict, but during closing arguments he told jurors that until the World Trade Center attack his client only talked of being a white separatist. After Sept. 11, he said, Mr. Stroman's actions turned violent for what his "chaotic mind" twisted into a patriotic act. : : "He thought he was being a hero," Mr. Oatman argued. "He thought that America would praise him and pin a medal on his chest." : : The prosecution vehemently disagreed. : : "If there are any true Americans here, it's these people," he said, pointing to the family members of Mr. Stroman's victims seated in the gallery. "Not this man." : : Mr. Hasan, a Pakistani immigrant and father of four, moved to Dallas last year from New Jersey to open a convenience store in Pleasant Grove. He was shot once in the head while working behind the grill of Mom's Grocery, but no money was taken from an open cash register. : : Mr. Bhuiyan emigrated from Bangladesh in 1999. He worked at a Texaco station in Far East Dallas, where he was blinded in one eye by a single blast by Mr. Stroman from a .410-gauge derringer. He testified Wednesday that Mr. Stroman shot him in the face and walked out without taking money from an open register. : : Mr. Patel was a naturalized U.S. citizen who worked 18-hour days at the Shell station on Big Town Boulevard to support his wife and two children. Mr. Stroman shot him in the chest with a .44-caliber revolver.

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