Sean Kratz will not sit on death row for his role in the brutal 2017 killings of young men on a Bucks County, Pennsylvania, farm, prosecutors announced Monday.
Kratz, 22, was convicted on Friday of the murder of Dean Finocchiaro and of manslaughter in the deaths of two other men. His sentencing hearing was set to begin this morning in Doylestown.
"In light of last week’s jury verdict holding Sean Kratz criminally responsible for the homicides of 19-year-old Dean Finocchiaro, Mark Sturgis, and Tom Meo, and with the understanding of the victims’ families, the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office today will end its pursuit of the death penalty in the case," the DA's office said in a news release.
The jury found Kratz guilty of first- and second-degree murder in Finocchiaro's death. He was also found guilty of voluntary manslaughter and conspiracy for the deaths of Mark Sturgis and Tom Meo on his cousin's sprawling farm.
He will spend life in prison — a mandatory sentence for the first-degree murder conviction. He previously rejected a plea deal.
Kratz's cousin, Cosmo DiNardo, is serving four consecutive life sentences for the July 2017 killings of the three men and a fourth, Jimi Taro Patrick.
During a 90-minute interview with detectives, which was obtained exclusively by NBC10 last year, Kratz admitted to shooting Finocchiaro at DiNardo's Solebury Township farm. The recording was played for jurors at the trial.
The cousins, according to Kratz, agreed to rob, shoot and kill Finocchiaro but Kratz hesitated when it came time to pull the trigger, he told detectives in the recording.
It took jurors about 18 hours to reach a verdict in Kratz's murder case.
