TACOMA, Wash. (AP) — A jury in Tacoma has reinstated the death penalty for a man convicted of raping, robbing and stabbing a neighbor to death.
The Pierce County prosecutor’s office says the jury reached its decision Tuesday and Allen Eugene Gregory will be sentenced again on June 13 to die.
Now 39 years old, Gregory was convicted of aggravated murder in 2001 for the 1996 killing of Geneine Harshfield who was attacked after she returned home from her bartending job. The killing went unsolved until Gregory’s arrest in a rape case two years later produced a DNA match.
In 2006 the state Supreme Court upheld the murder conviction but overturned the death sentence. Pierce County prosecutors decided to re-try the penalty phase. It began two months ago and went to the jury Monday.
