This report has been updated with additional reaction.

A jury in Brooklyn federal court voted Wednesday on the death penalty for

.

Wilson will be executed in a federal prison for killing two detectives on Staten Island during an undercover gun buy-and-bust operation in March, 2003. Wilson sat stoically as the verdict was read, his head in his hands. Some of his relatives sobbed.

The jury rejected its only other option -- life in prison for Wilson, without the possibility of parole.

Wilson, 31, was found guilty in December 2006 of slaying Detectives Rodney J. Andrews, 34, and James V. Nemorin, 36, and dumping their bodies on a Tompkinsville street.

As part of the verdict that was read, only two of 12 jurors expressed agreement with the statement that Wilson's life had value.

Family members of the victims are expected to deliver statements shortly.

"I want to thank the jury. I'm pleased about the outcome," said Rodney Andrews Sr. "He took my son away from me and his partner. He's just proven he's not going to change." Andrews said he would attend the execution in person.

Said Detectives Endowment Association President Michael Palladino: "This is the second jury to have done this. What the jury recognized was not only the severity of the crime but that Ronell Wilson will never change. He's a thug. It's in his DNA."

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly also said the jury made the right call: "When two New York City police officers were killed in cold blood it was more than a calculated attack on two outstanding human beings," he said in a statement. "It was an assault on the society that those officers represented, and for that reason their murders had to be answered with the full force of punishment at society's disposal. To do otherwise is to invite chaos."

This was a re-trial of the death-penalty phase for Wilson. In 2010, a federal appeals court, citing prosecutorial errors in closing arguments, overturned the death penalty for Wilson, whom a Brooklyn federal court jury, in January 2007, sentenced to die by lethal injection. The murder conviction stood.

District Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis charged the jury shortly before noon Wednesday. It took the panel just five hours to reach its decision.

Closing arguments in the case were heard Tuesday. At the time, Assistant U.S. Attorney Celia Cohen asked the panel show no mercy on Wilson -- just as he showed no mercy on Andrews and Nemorin.



"When a cold killer executes two heroes for greed and glory and dumps their bodies on the street, the death penalty is perfectly justified. ... We ask that you impose the ultimate punishment for the ultimate crime."