A judge has sentenced a black man to die for the slaying of an Auburn University freshman who was abducted at gunpoint, fatally shot and left to die on a rural road

Judge Jacob Walker imposed the sentence on Courtney Lockhart, 26, who was convicted of capital murder in the 2008 killing of Lauren Burk, 18, of Marietta, Ga. The jury voted 12-0 to recommend a sentence of life without parole for Lockhart, but the judge has the final say under Alabama law. Walker decided Lockhart should be put to death, noting that the black man was suspected in other crimes that the jurors didn't know about. Evidence showed that Burk was kidnapped from a campus parking lot at Auburn on March 4, 2008, after visiting her boyfriend. Prosecutors said that Lockhart forced her to disrobe and shot her in the back as she tried to escape from the moving vehicle, then left her to die. During the trial, defense lawyers argued that Lockhart was mentally troubled and didn't mean for the gun to go off. Speaking to a nearly full courtroom, Walker said that Lockhart was suspected in a string of five robberies that occurred in southeast Alabama and west Georgia around the same time as the slaying, but jurors did not hear about those crimes during the murder trial.