SAN FRANCISCO – He was a philandering husband convicted of murdering his young and very pregnant wife in a sensational case that shocked a community.

His name wasn’t Scott Peterson, though. It was Todd Garton, and a Shasta County jury in 2001 said he deserved to die.

“I signed the document that the jury found for death and I think about that a lot,” said Fred Castagna, who served as jury foreman. “It was emotional during deliberations, but I don’t lose sleep over it. “

Some jurors who helped send other killers to Death Row expressed almost identical feelings about their experiences.

They sat through months of testimony that toggled between traumatizing and monotonous. They grappled with religious, moral and legal issues during emotional deliberations. Gruesome images from the crime scenes and the pain of the victims’ parents as they testified about their loved ones still haunt them today.

The jurors were overwhelmingly convinced of the killers’ guilt, yet sending someone to Death Row presented one of the toughest decisions of their own lives.

“I have strong religious beliefs, and this wasn’t like I had to decide what kind of ice cream to buy,” said Brian Bianco, who served as foreman of the Santa Clara County jury that convicted and condemned Richard Allen Davis to death for killing Polly Klaas.

Nevertheless, Bianco said he has never doubted that he made the right decision, reached after four agonizing days of deliberations.

It took the Shasta County jury just 70 minutes of deliberations to condemn Garton, who was convicted of hiring a hit man to kill his 29-year-old wife, who was eight months pregnant.

“There wasn’t any real reason to mull it over,” said foreman Castagna. “It was pretty clear that this guy was evil, that he had concocted this scheme to get his wife killed. “

Garton, convicted of two first-degree murder charges, is one of three men sentenced to die because a fetus perished during a slaying. Peterson could be the fourth such convicted killer to join the 640 other inmates on San Quentin’s Death Row. Only 10 inmates have been executed since California re-instituted the death penalty in 1992.

Castagna said the five months of sometimes graphic testimony during the guilt phase “pretty much drove” the death verdict.

“You can’t help but consider the fact that you’ll have to decide punishment if you find him guilty,” he said. “That’s always in the back of your mind, but you try not to let it influence you.”

Determining punishment before such deliberations begin is a common experience for many death penalty jurors, according to an ongoing study by the Capital Jury Project at Northeastern University.

About half the 1,300 capital case jurors questioned for the study said they had made their sentencing decisions during the guilt phase of the trial, according to chief investigator William Bowers.

“That’s perhaps the most profound thing we found,” said Bowers, who sometimes serves as an expert witness for those facing the death penalty. “That’s a major departure of how it’s supposed to work. You’re supposed to wait for instructions.”

What’s more, Bowers said that many jurors vote for death because they fear the killer will some day be set free, even if a sentence of life without parole is an option, as it is in the Peterson case.

“There’s a pervasive anxiety that the defendant will be back on the streets,” Bowers said.

That anxiety played a major role in a Santa Clara County jury sentencing William Dennis to death in 1988. He was convicted of the Halloween night machete slashing of his ex-wife and her eight-month-old fetus as the victim’s 4-year-old daughter cowered behind a couch.

“What it came down to for us was that we were not convinced that life without the possibility of parole meant that,” jury foreman Forrester Sinclair said. “We decided we had to have him removed from society forever.”

Sinclair said he doesn’t have any regrets, but does expect to feel a little discomfort when Dennis eventually gets an execution date.

Sinclair said his mind wasn’t made up when the Dennis jury began deliberating punishment, but it appeared several other jurors had already determined to vote for death when they convicted him of first-degree murder for his ex-wife’s death and second-degree for the fetus’ death.

“I got the impression some of the people were predisposed to the death penalty,” he said.

Peterson, 32, was convicted this month of first-degree murder in the death of Laci Peterson and of second-degree murder in the death of her fetus. Arguments in the penalty phase of his trial are scheduled to begin Tuesday.