A jury will return to the U.S. Courthouse in Brooklyn early today to begin considering whether to sentence to death a man who murdered two police officers.

In the month since the jury convicted Ronell Wilson, 24, and then broke for the holidays, death penalty deliberations have been on full display here in federal district court at Cadman Plaza. Just last Friday evening, as the courthouse emptied of lawyers and judges, a different jury voted 10–2 to spare the life of a different defendant. That defendant, Martin Aguilar, will spend his life in federal prison for the crime of murderfor-hire.

Now as the courthouse opens again after the long weekend, Wilson’s jury will take up the question of life or death. The jury’s decision will be closely watched: Not since the capital cases of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and bank robber Gerhard Puff in the early 1950s has a death sentence been issued from federal court in this state.

The prosecution’s argument for Wilson’s death is likely to sound clinical at times as the three assistant U.S. attorneys on the case go through their list of “aggravating factors.” The defense will seek to counter these with their list of “mitigating factors.”

As prosecutors seek to convince the jury of one of those factors — the future dangerousness Wilson poses in federal prison — the focus of the proceedings will veer away from the murders of the two undercover officers and turn instead to comparatively petty crimes.

To show that Wilson remains dangerous, prosecutors are likely to focus on the defendant’s alleged membership in the Bloods gang and discuss a long list of instances in which Wilson assaulted other inmates and guards while at Rikers Island. Wilson is now in federal jail in Brooklyn. He was moved because the district attorney in Staten Island gave the case to the U.S. attorney’s office following a 2004 court ruling by the state’s Court of Appeals that halted death penalty prosecutions in state courts.

On March 10, 2002, Wilson killed undercover detectives Rodney Andrews and James Nemorin by shooting both men in the head. The two detectives, members of the NYPD’s elite Firearms Investigation Unit, had come to northeastern Staten Island to purchase a gun from a small gang of which Wilson was a member. The murders occurred in Nemorin’s car, as it sat parked on an empty street, unseen by the hefty police backup that was nearby.

The crime was among the most notorious ever perpetrated against New York City police officers. The three-week trial was attended by dozens of officers, some of whom watched the proceedings from a television in the courthouse cafeteria when the courtroom benches were full.

Prosecutors had planned to argue during the death penalty phase that the murders of Nemorin and Andrews have had a chilling effect on undercover police work across the city. But in a letter submitted to the court three weeks ago, assistant U.S. attorney Colleen Kavanagh wrote that the prosecution “no longer intends to offer such evidence.” No reason is given in the letter.

Still, the prosecutors have indicated they will call forward colleagues of Nemorin and Andrews to testify in the penalty phase.

During the trial, the jury grew acquainted with the voices of the two slain detectives from a recording that captured much of the conversation from their final hour. The jurors will hear again from Nemorin. A recent order by the judge overseeing the case, Nicholas Garaufis, indicates that prosecutors intend to play a videotape in which Nemorin speaks of the dangers of undercover police work. According to the judge’s order, The videotape is 20 minutes long and was shot by a documentary film crew from Ireland.

The prosecution and defense are likely to present differing accounts of whether Wilson knew his two victims were police officers, according to court documents. The extent of Wilson’s knowledge of the identities of Nemorin and Andrews was never settled during the trial, although prosecutors suggested that Wilson knew he was dealing with police. That question, although of no legal significance, could loom large in the minds of jurors as they decide Wilson’s fate.

The defense will get to call forward an expert witness on hip-hop culture who is expected to tell a jury that it should not give much weight to handwritten rap lyrics found in Wilson’s pocket during his arrest. At trial, prosecutors had argued that those violent lyrics amounted to a confession of guilt. In them, Wilson speaks of leaving “45 slogs in da back of ya head.” Until now, Judge Garaufis had refused to allow the defense to call forward the expert, Yasser Arafat Payne, who is an assistant professor of Black American Studies at the University of Delaware.