Joel Lebron deserves to die for kidnapping, raping and executing a popular South Miami High teen, a jury decided Friday.
By a vote of 9-3, jurors recommended execution for Lebron, who last week as convicted of the slaying of Ana Maria Angel in April 2002.
The jury deliberated two hours. Miami-Dade Circuit Judge William Thomas will ultimately deliver the final sentence.
Lebron, 34, was one of five Orlando men who kidnapped Angel and her boyfriend as the couple finished a South Beach moonlight stroll. After robbing them, the men gang raped Angel in the back of their truck, then slit her boyfriend’s throat, leaving him for dead alongside Interstate 95 in Broward County.
Alongside the interstate in Palm Beach County, Lebron and another man marched Angel down an embankment, into the brush near a sound barrier wall. Lebron shot Angel in the back of the head as she begged for her life, her hands clasped in prayer