Chinese scholar's killer sentenced to life in prison

The form has multiple sections, including a section on “aggravating factors” that asks jurors, among other things, if Christensen killed Zhang “in an especially heinous, cruel, or depraved manner” and whether he’s shown no remorse, and a section on “mitigation factors” asking if aspects of Christensen’s “background, record or character ... mitigate against imposition of a death sentence”.

The jurors had to independently assess if aggravating factors presented by US prosecutors regarding how Christensen killed Zhang and the impact her death has had on others “sufficiently outweigh the mitigating factors”, according to the penalty-phase form. 

On Wednesday, the jury asked the judge whether the prosecution’s aggravating factor of future dangerousness referred to while Christensen was in prison or if he were free or had never been caught. The judge circled “in prison” after a brief discussion with defense lawyers and prosecutors. 

Jurors also asked if the jury was supposed to quantify the number of jurors who found each mitigating factor proved by a preponderance of the evidence. Both sides agreed the answer is yes. 

On Thursday, the jury asked how the number of jurors who found a mitigating factor to exist could be used after the trial.

“We are inclined not to share our results,” a juror wrote.

“We need help,” the jury then said in a message to the court on Thursday, asking the judge about what would happen if they couldn’t reach a unanimous decision — just about one hour before the judge announced the verdict.

“I think today must be the most disappointing day for Zhang’s family other than the day they acknowledged Yingying was kidnapped and killed,” Wang Zhidong, a Chicago-based lawyer who represents Zhang’s family, told China Daily after the sentencing.

“But we have to know that it’s very difficult to seek the death penalty in federal court,” Wang said, adding that juries have sentenced defendants to death in only 36 percent of the cases that went to trial.

Since the reinstatement of the federal death penalty in 1988, 78 people have been sentenced to death — but only three have actually been put to death, according to Death Penalty Information Center data to 2018.

Zhang was last seen alive on June 9, 2017, getting into Christensen’s black Saturn Astra on the University of Illinois campus in Urbana after she missed a bus to an appointment. The two did not previously know each other. 

Christensen’s lawyers admitted in June 2017 that he raped and killed the 26-year-old Zhang, and the same jurors took less than 90 minutes to convict Christensen last month of kidnapping and killing Zhang.

Prosecutors said Christensen raped, choked and stabbed Zhang before beating her to death with a baseball bat and decapitating her. Christensen has never revealed what he did with Zhang’s remains.