After five hours of deliberation, jurors sentenced cold-blooded cop killer Ronell Wilson to death today for the 2003 murders of undercover NYPD detectives James Nemorin and Rodney Andrews during a Staten Island gun buy bust gone bad.
The 31-year-old Wilson — who had a previous death sentence for the murders tossed on a technicality — couldn’t escape Brooklyn federal court with his life a second time and is slated to die by lethal injection.
Wearing glasses and a blue dress shirt, the doomed Bloods gangster slumped his head down after the verdict was read before peering into the court gallery and fixing his gaze on his devastated mother and two sisters.
The inconsolable women slumped onto each other and sobbed — while Andrews’ father looked on with stern contentment.
The grieving dad later announced his wish to watch his son’s killer die in person.
“It’s satisfaction,” Rodney Andrews Sr. said.
The dead cop’s widow, Maryann Andrews, began sobbing as she left the courtroom and wouldn’t comment.
Their grim mission accomplished, prosecutors James McGovern and Celia Cohen walked out of the proceeding without a word.
Prosecutors highlighted the heinous nature of the murders and Wilson’s lack of tangible remorse as grounds for killing him. The jury, made up of seven women and five men, accepted that rationale and turned around the death sentence with stunning quickness.
“I think what the jury recognized is not only the severity of the crimes that were committed but also that Ronell Wilson is not going to change,” said Detectives Endowment Association President Michael Palladino. “He’s a thug. It’s in his DNA. He actually enjoys it.”
Wilson first shot Andrews in the back of the head and then blew away Nemorin, even after the hero undercover begged for his life for the sake of his kids.
The killer’s legal team had strenuously argued that Wilson’s awful upbringing — marked by a neglectful, drug addicted mother and an absentee father — was reason to spare his life.
They tried to make the case that the grim prospect of growing old and pathetic behind bars was punishment enough for the unrepentant killer.
But prosecutors countered that Wilson was “thriving” in the prison environment and shouldn’t be allowed to live out his days as a jailhouse celebrity.
Wilson managed to impregnate prison guard Nancy Gonzalez during his time in jail and she gave to their son, Justus, this past March. Wilson’s defense attorneys opted not to broach the existence of the child as a reason to spare his life.
The killer was convicted and sentenced to death for the killings in 2007 but the decision was tossed out because of a prosecutorial error.
“We hope that this measure of justice brings some solace to those family and friends who still grieve the terrible loss of Detectives Rodney Andrews and James Nemorin,” NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly said in a statement.
Asked what he would tell the man who robbed him of his beloved boy, Rodney Andrews Sr. paused.
“He took my son away from me,” he said. “There is nothing I could say to him.”