In the end, it was the good he did that saved his life.

For sure, Samuel Dieteman has done a lot of terrible things in his lifetime, some of the worst a man can do. He set fire to buildings, helped shoot and wound more than a dozen people and murdered two hapless young women in the summer of 2006.

But when it came time Wednesday to decide how the 33-year-old Phoenix man should be punished for his role in the Serial Shooter killing spree, a group of 12 people, his jury, chose to look beyond his horrific crimes to his efforts at helping police and apologizing to his victims after his arrest.

“It changed my mind,” said Ulysses Fuentes, who ultimately sided with his fellow jurors to spare Dieteman’s life. “He actually confessed and took charge for the crimes that he did.”

And indeed he had. Dieteman began confessing in the first few hours after he and co-conspirator Dale Hausner were arrested in the Serial Shooter case in August 2006. During the next three years, he helped authorities build a case against Hausner, who it turned out had been killing people for at least nine months before the two men had met.

Earlier this year, Dieteman’s cooperation helped convince a jury to convict Hausner of six murders and numerous other crimes. Hausner was sentenced to death March 27 and is currently serving time on death row in Florence.

In recent months, Dieteman began answering letters in his cell from some of the surviving victims who wanted to understand his mindset. Both in writing and from the witness stand, he apologized for his role in the shootings, taking full responsibility for everything.

By the time his sentencing trial opened in Maricopa County Superior Court this month, Dieteman had done everything an admitted murderer could do to make a case for leniency with a jury. He had cooperated with authorities, apologized to his victims and promised to better himself in prison.

It was exactly what his defense team hoped jurors would pick up on during the trial, despite hearing gruesome tales of death and mayhem.

On Wednesday, they learned their strategy had worked. Shortly after 4 p.m., following about seven hours of deliberations, the jury walked into the courtroom and announced that Dieteman would receive life in prison with no chance of parole for his crimes, the lesser of two possible sentences. They spared him the death penalty for the murders of Claudia Gutierrez-Cruz and Robin Blasnek

Signs of life

Following the verdict, several jurors spoke to the media outside the courthouse to explain their decision. Many of them said they went into the trial leaning toward the death penalty but were swayed by Dieteman’s cooperation with authorities.

Sergio Pedroza, one of the jurors, called it “the turning point” of the trial. He said sitting on the jury knowing he would have to make a decision was difficult to do. “I beat myself up so many days at home,” he said.

But Dieteman’s attitude during the trial was enough to sway him. “I definitely believe that he was remorseful,” Pedroza said.

Juror Eric Pyles echoed the sentiment. He said he was swayed partly by the fact that Dieteman had a rough childhood, having grown up exposed to alcohol and drugs at an early age. It didn’t excuse the crimes, Pyles said, but it helped show him in a human light.

“Going into it, I never thought I’d feel sorry for him,” Pyles said. “By the end, I think I did.”

Emphasizing how tough the decision was that jurors faced, Pyles said they began deliberations on Tuesday split down the center, with six believing Dieteman deserved to die and six believing he should live. By the next afternoon, however, the group agreed unanimously on life.

The decision was made a little easier, Pyles said, by the utter contrast between Dieteman and his former friend, Hausner. Pyles called Hausner “crazy Dale.” The serial killer never admitted his involvement in the crimes and told his own jury earlier this year that they made a mistake by convicting him.

“That they would both go to death row, we didn’t think that would be fair,” Pyles said.

No easy outcome

Attorney Vince Imbordino, who led the prosecution for the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, said seeking the death penalty against Dieteman, who had been instrumental in convicting Hausner, was “difficult” but “not impossible.”

“I guess the way that we looked at it was that he deserved the death penalty,” Imbordino said, adding: “Our purpose was always to have the jury make the decision rather than bargaining the decision.”

Prosecutor Laura Reckart, who also worked both cases, said that even though the state didn’t get the verdict it wanted, Dieteman’s punishment was still one of the harshest possible. “He won’t be out on the street again.”

As much as anything else, this case seemed to answer whether a man could earn redemption for unspeakable crimes. The answer, according to the jury, appeared to be that he could.

Dieteman’s lead defense attorney, Maria Schaffer, began crying as the jury’s verdict was read, filled with relief at the outcome. She said very little afterward, but it was clear Schaffer cared about her client as he worked to better himself.

“Justice was served,” Schaffer said. “Sam has always been prepared to accept whatever sentence was presented by the jury.”

The lead investigator in Dieteman’s case, Phoenix police detective Clark Schwartzkopf, talked about the tough situation authorities faced when asking for the death penalty for one of their star witnesses. Schwartzkopf said he was “alright” with the jury’s decision, but he walked a tightrope when going any further.

“He stood tall when the state needed him to stand tall,” said Schwartzkopf, who got to know Dieteman as well as anyone during the past three years. But, Schwartzkopf said, “It’s inexcusable what he did.”

He was right. There were no excuses for what Dieteman did, and the gunman did not make any during his trial.

For the jury, that was as important as anything. After the verdict, they were allowed to speak to Dieteman behind closed doors. They talked for about a minute, several jurors said, not enough time to have an in-depth conversation but enough to say a few key things.

Mostly, the jurors encouraged Dieteman to try to make a positive difference in the world, even from a maximum security prison.

But Fuentes, one of the jurors, had something else to say to him. “I just thanked him for cooperating and actually confessing,” Fuentes said. “May God be with him.”

The jury decided that Dieteman deserved to spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of release as long as he is alive.

Dieteman pleaded guilty to the 2006 murders but agreed to help authorities convict his co-conspirator, Dale Hausner, who was convicted and received six death sentences earlier this year.

The announcement by the 12-person jury in Maricopa County Superior Court drew an emotional response from Dieteman’s attorney and his mother, who both could be seen crying afterward.

“Justice has been served,” his attorney, Maria Schaffer, said following the verdict. “Sam has always been prepared to accept whatever sentence was presented by the jury.”

Late Wednesday and early today, Judge Roland Steinle talked to attorneys about a note he received from one of the jurors, which said several members of the jury had been talking about the case — a violation of rules they’re under.

At least one of those chatty jurors apparently was also overheard saying he or she had already made up his or her mind, following just one day of testimony, about whether Dieteman should be sentenced to death.

Just after lunchtime today, the attorneys in the case walked out of Steinle’s chambers, followed into the courtroom a short time later by the jury, which had one fewer person in it. It is unclear whether the attorneys and Steinle agreed to kick the juror off the trial, but it was clear the jury was smaller.

The disappearance still leaves the trial with 13 jurors — one more than the number needed to continue.

A Phoenix television station will hand over the footage it aired earlier this week of the second gunman in the Serial Shooter case being paraded around the jail in his underwear, an attorney for the station said today.

Phoenix media lawyer Dan Barr said Channel 3 (KTVK-TV) has agreed to honor a subpoena for the footage, sent to them by the defense attorney of confessed gunman Samuel Dieteman. The gunman was pulled from his cell in front of television cameras during a tour of the jail’s high-security unit, which was given to the station over the weekend by officials with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.

Dieteman’s attorney, Maria Schaffer, called the footage “outrageous” and “undignified” on Wednesday as she criticized sheriff’s office — and Sheriff Joe Arpaio by name — for allowing her client to be filmed on the eve of his sentencing trial.

The sheriff’s office, however, said it did not intend for Dieteman specifically to be shown. The reason for the tour was that the sheriff’s office wanted to show that it was searching the high-security cells to quell supposed racial tensions.

Deputy Chief Jack MacIntyre told the Arizona Republic in an article published today: “We feel the reason that Channel 3 took it upon themselves to film Dieteman is because they recognized him.”

Barr said the footage will likely be handed over to Dieteman’s attorney today — one day ahead of the subpoena’s deadline.

If true, it would mean the jurors broke an explicit rule — on the first day of testimony no less — to refrain from talking about the case with anyone (even each other) until all the evidence has been presented and they are asked to decide the verdict.

Steinle told the attorneys he would get to the bottom of the matter before testimony picks up again on Thursday morning. It’s possible the whole thing is a misunderstanding, but in the worst-case scenario, all three could be booted from the trial for gabbing about their opinions.

With just two extra people on the jury, the remaining pool wouldn’t have enough people left to reach a verdict. The result would be a mistrial.

The aftermath would be a major headache for everyone involved. The original jury selection took nearly seven weeks — partly because of some scheduling conflicts between the court and attorneys. Hundreds of people had to be questioned to find just 14 who knew so little about the headline-grabbing case that they could reach an unbiased opinion.

In the best scenario for Thursday, Steinle could find out that no damage was done and simply remind the jurors to keep their thoughts to themselves until the time is right.

Until then, it is anybody’s guess what will happen.

Live from the courtroom: The man who has positioned himself as “the face of the victims” in the Serial Shooter case returned to the courtroom today after fending off death for the second time.

Paul Patrick became an enduring figure in the courtroom earlier this year during the six-month trial of serial killer Dale Hausner, who led the Serial Shooter crime spree during 2005 and 2006. Patrick saw his daily presence there as a duty to the victims who could not or did not attend the trial for whatever reason.

The survivor of a 2006 shooting, Patrick went missing from the courtroom on the final day of closing arguments in Hausner’s murder trial. His absence stood out that day, even among the high drama of the day’s proceedings. It turned out that Patrick suffered a stroke that morning, which doctors later said was the likely result of the shooting three years prior.

“It’s sometimes minute by minute,” his mother, Mary Patrick, said as her son laid unconscious in a hospital bed in a state of near death.

It was the second time Patrick had been in that condition. In 2006, he spent about six weeks in a coma that police thought would likely kill him. Phoenix police detective Clark Schwartzkopf testified last year that at one point he believed the next call he would get regarding Patrick would be from the medical examiner’s office asking him to report for man’s autopsy.

Patrick proved his doubters wrong back then, though, and survived. He recovered enough to attend Hausner’s trial.

Now, he has done it again. Patrick was back in the courtroom today for the death penalty trial of the second gunman in his shooting, Samuel Dieteman. He is much thinner now and speaking just above a whisper, but he has returned to his regular spot sitting just behind the prosecutors.

Prosecutor Vince Imbordino acknowledged Patrick’s presence during his opening arguments this morning. “His injuries are going to be with him for life,” Imbodrino said. “They are not going to go away.”

Defense attorney Maria Schaffer acknowledged him, too. Reading a list of the victims shot by her client, she paused on Patrick’s name and looked in his direction. The jury looked that way, too.

With recognition from attorneys and jurors alike, Patrick was again was able to do what he set out to do. He once more became the face of the victims.

It began with the wounding of Kibili Tambadu on May 20. Dieteman was riding in the car with his friend, Dale Hausner, when Hausner pulled a shotgun from the back seat, rolled down a window and shot the lone man walking in the dark. Schaffer described her client’s reaction as “shock.”

Minutes later on that same night, Hausner handed the shotgun to Dieteman and told him, “Your turn, dude.” Dieteman mimicked his friend, and fired the gun at another lone figure, this time nearly cutting in half a woman named Claudia Gutierrez-Cruz. The woman did not survive. Schaffer called it “Sam’s first kill.”

“Ladies and gentleman,” Schaffer said, “this is the beginning of a long, tragic and bloody spiral into the depths of hell for my client.”

For the next three months, Dieteman and Hausner drove around the Valley on random nights, shooting random pedestrians and bicyclists, all in the same manner. Another woman would die and several people were seriously wounded before it was all over.

The random shootings were something, it turns out, that Hausner had been doing for nearly a year by that point. He was convicted earlier this of six murders and numerous other shootings, and he was sentenced to death in addition to more than 400 years in prison.

“All of these shootings stick with Mr. Dieteman until the day he dies,” Schaffer told the jury.

The panel of Dieteman’s peers are being asked to decide whether he should join his former friend on death row. Schaffer told the jury that the three-month killing spree certainly makes him eligible for the death penalty, however, she pleaded with them to remember his life before the crimes, as well as his cooperation with police and the remorse he has shown since then.

“You must, and I ask you to, judge him as a whole man,” Schaffer said.

The sentence of life in prison without the chance of parole, the only alternative to the death penalty, will not be easy for Dieteman, his attorney said. Because he cooperated with police and prosecutors in the trial against his former friend, Dieteman will be seen as a snitch to his fellow inmates, a reviled role behind the jailhouse walls. “His life will be hell, either as a lifer or on death row,” Schaffer said.

During the trial, however, Schaffer said, neither she nor Dieteman will offer excuses for the crimes.

“I think it’s outrageous. I think it’s undignified,” attorney Maria Schaffer told a judge just minutes before the death penalty trial for Samuel Dieteman began this morning.

Maricopa County jail officials apparently pulled Dieteman from his cell with local media watching so it could be searched as part of the their recent crackdown on racial tensions among inmates.

Schaffer said she wants to show the video to Judge Roland Steinle, who is overseeing the trial, and has subpoenaed the station manager at a local TV news outlet to provide the footage.

Tomorrow is the day that Samuel Dieteman gets to do what his victims could not: ask someone to spare his life.

The 33-year-old is the confessed second gunman in the Serial Shooter killing spree, which came to a boil in the Phoenix area three years ago this summer. By the end of it, at least eight people were dead and dozens of others wounded. The main shooter, Dale Hausner, was sentenced to death earlier this year for his role in the spree. Authorities have said Dieteman joined in the violence only during the the latter part of it, taking part in two of the killings and several other shootings.

On Wednesday, opening arguments are scheduled to begin in a sort of mini-trial in Maricopa County Superior Court in downtown Phoenix, where a jury will be asked to decide whether Dieteman should be put to death for the murders of Claudia Gutierrez-Cruz and Robin Blasnek. Dieteman has already pleaded guilty to the crimes and will be asking for the greatest mercy he can receive under a plea agreement — life in prison without parole.

For the prosecutors, the task of asking for his death will not be an easy one. Despite his heinous crimes, Dieteman has served as their ally for the past two years, a star witness in the case against Dale Hausner, as well as in a successful attempted-murder trial against the serial killer’s brother, Jeff Hausner. Without Dieteman’s eyewitness testimony in both cases, convictions would have been much harder to come by.

For his defense team, the task of fighting for his life is equally daunting. A recovering alcoholic and methamphetamine user, Dieteman isn’t exactly a sympathetic figure. He was involved in one of the worst crime sprees in state history. But he is not entirely unlikeable either. The former transient has confessed his crimes, shown remorse and cooperated with authorities. In other words, he has done everything a murder defendant is supposed to do.

Dieteman also appears to have some amount of deep internal conflict about it all, an emotion that has just barely shown itself to the public. As recently as October, he called his plea agreement “bogus” in a letter to a friend and fought behind the scenes with his lead attorney, Maria Schaffer. Then in January, he testified that he has had a change of heart.

As for whether he deserves the death penalty, Dieteman has said he does. “If I were on the jury to decide my fate,” he testified earlier this year, “yes sir, I would vote for death,”

The trial is expected to wrap up by the end of the month.

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The brother of serial killer Dale Hausner was sentenced to 18 years in prison today for nearly stabbing a man to death in 2006 in a Phoenix parking lot.

Jeff Hausner, 42, was convicted last month of attempted murder and aggravated assault for luring a man named Timothy Davenport to a church parking lot near 73rd Avenue and Camelback Road and stabbing him multiple times in the back.

The 18-year sentence was added atop an eight-year prison stint Hausner was already serving for stabbing another man around the same time.

In both cases, authorities believe he was accompanied by his younger brother, Dale, and a friend named Samuel Dieteman, both of whom were part of a broader, yearlong killing spree that later became known as the Serial Shooter case. That belief is based largely on testimony and statements by Dieteman, who admitted to being present for the stabbings, as well as taking part in two murders and numerous other shootings in the summer of 2006.

In fact, Dieteman also testified in the younger Hausner’s murder trial earlier this year that Jeff Hausner bragged about being involved in at least three of the earlier murders of the Serial Shooter spree. However, Maricopa County prosecutors have never charged Jeff Hausner with any killings, largely because that testimony remains some of the only evidence connecting him to the broader crime spree.

Given the circumstances, today’s sentencing may have marked the last chance authorities had to put Jeff Hausner away for a long time.

“This sentence guarantees that Jeff Haunser will spend the next two decades behind bars,” Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, whose office prosecuted the case, said in a statement after the sentencing.

Hausner’s younger brother, convicted earlier this year of six murders and dozens of other crimes, has been sentenced to death on top of more than 400 years in prison.

Dieteman has pleaded guilty to his role in the killings and a jury is currently being selected to decide whether he deserves the death penalty. Opening arguments are expected to begin in his trial by the end of the month.