PEORIA, Ill._A federal judge is set to sentence Brendt Christensen to life in prison without possibility of release after the jury that last month found Christensen guilty in the kidnapping and slaying of Chinese scholar Yingying Zhang was unable to come to a unanimous decision on whether he should be sentenced to death or life in prison.
"We need help," the jury said in a message sent to the court shortly after 1:30 p.m. Thursday, asking what happens if they are unable to reach a unanimous decision.
The same jurors took less than 90 minutes to convict Christensen, 30, trial last month.
The judge was sent to impose sentence at 4 p.m.
The jury deliberated over two days after more than a week of testimony in the trial's penalty phase during which they heard from Zhang's parents and brother, as well as her fiance. Zhang's father, Ronggao Zhang, called the loss of his daughter "completely unbearable," in court last week.
"To tell you the truth, I do not know how to live the remainder of my life," he said through a translator.
Zhang's family traveled to Peoria from their home in China for both the guilt and penalty phases of the trial.
Prosecutors, in seeking the death penalty, presented aggravating factors such as Zhang's killing was pre-meditated, that she died during the commission of another crime _ kidnapping, and she was particularly vulnerable because of her small size and limited English-speaking ability.
Zhang had just arrived on the University of Illinois campus roughly two months before her June 9, 2017 disappearance.
During both phases of the trial, prosecutors played a conversation Christensen's ex-girlfriend recorded while wearing a wire for the FBI on June 29, 2017, in which he confessed to killing Zhang weeks earlier. Christensen was arrested the following day.
In graphic detail, Christensen told his then-girlfriend how he sexually assaulted, choked and beat Zhang with a baseball bat. He also said that he stabbed her and decapitated her. Zhang's remains have never been recovered.
Defense attorney Elisabeth Pollock told jurors during her closing argument on Wednesday that regardless of whether they chose a sentence of life in prison or death for Christensen, he would be leaving prison "in a coffin."
In an effort to spare Christensen's life, his defense attorneys presented roughly 50 mitigating factors to the jury. The factors ranged from his mother's alcohol abuse and depression during his childhood to his night terrors and the fact that he told others, including counselors, he was having homicidal thoughts in 2017.
Defense attorneys also highlighted a suicidal episode Christensen had when he was 15 years old, when he jumped off the roof of his house and ran into a moving van.
In the months before Christensen killed Zhang in 2017, his marriage grew rocky and his grades plummeted. He had been in the university's prestigious doctoral physics program, and dropped down to pursuing a master's degree instead, defense attorneys said.
Jurors heard testimony from Christensen's parents, sister, uncles, friends and ex-wife. Christensen did not testify.
Prosecutors and the defense made their closing arguments Wednesday morning, and the jury began deliberating on a sentence before 2 p.m. Wednesday.
U.S. District Court Judge Jim Shadid excused them at 5 p.m. Wednesday, and they resumed deliberating on Thursday morning. The jury sent multiple questions to the court over the two days, asking for clarification about weighing mitigating factors the defense presented and whether they should evaluate Christensen's "future dangerousness" only within a prison.
Christensen's case was a rare one in a state that has abolished capital punishment. Illinois did away with the death penalty in 2011 and put a moratorium on the practice a decade earlier, but it remains an avenue that federal prosecutors can pursue in some cases.
Christensen's mother, Ellen Williams, testified earlier this week that it would be devastating if he were sentenced to death.
The last person to be sentenced to death in a federal courtroom in Illinois was Dr. Ronald Mikos. In 2006, a judge affirmed a jury's decision to sentence him to death following his conviction for killing a former patient who was set to testify against him in a Medicare fraud trial.
Mikos remains on federal death row in Terre Haute, Ind.
