Vermont ? A man who kidnapped a supermarket worker and killed her as she prayed for her life was sentenced Friday to die, the first person to get the death penalty in Vermont in almost a half-century.

Donald Fell, 26, was sentenced by a federal judge in Burlington.

Speaking in court for the first time after years of court appearances, Fell apologized twice in a brief statement for stomping 53-year-old Terry King to death in November 2000 on a roadside in Dover, N.Y.

U.S. District Judge William Sessions III imposed the sentence, which was issued nearly a year ago by the same jury that found Fell guilty.

Fell was the first person sentenced to death in Vermont since 1957, and no one has been executed in the state since 1954. The state abandoned the death penalty in the mid-1960s, although the law remained on the books for another 20 years.

Federal prosecutors brought charges under a U.S. law that allows the death penalty for a carjacking that results in a death.