FORT LAUDERDALE - Broward jurors Tuesday afternoon recommended Howard Steven Ault be executed for killing two girls he lured to his Fort Lauderdale apartment with promises of Halloween candy.

Ault, 41, had been sentenced to death once before in 1999 for the murders. But the Florida Supreme Court three years later affirmed the conviction but threw out the sentence, saying a potential juror had been wrongly dismissed.

Now, Circuit Judge Marc Gold must decide whether to follow the jury's recommendation when he sentences Ault, who had prior convictions for preying upon young girls.

Prosecutors had told jurors Ault was a convicted pedophile who had preyed upon little girls ages 12, 11 and 6.

Ault's compulsion turned deadly Nov. 4, 1996, when he lured two sisters to his apartment. There he raped and strangled DeAnn Emerald Mu'min, 11. Then he smoked a cigarette before "squeezing the life out of" Alicia Sybilla Jones, 7, said Broward Assistant State Attorney Tim Donnelly. He hid their bodies in his attic.

"A horrific murder," "truly innocent victims" and a defendant with "an egregious criminal history" adds up to a crime that warrants the death penalty, Donnelly told jurors Monday in closing arguments of the second penalty phase in Ault's prolonged trial.

His defense attorney, Mitch Polay, urged those same jurors not to "exterminate" a mentally ill man whose life had been "filled with anguish, torment and abnormalities."

Broward jurors on Monday evening deliberated Ault's death-penalty case for about two hours before spending the night sequestered in a Broward hotel.

Ault befriended the girls' mother, Donna Jones, while she lived with her children in a car at John Easterlin Park, in Oakland Park. He was on house arrest for a prior sexual assault.

Ault's prior convictions for sexually preying upon little girls, Donnelly said, outweighed all else in determining a recommendation for the death penalty.

He described Ault as a self-absorbed sociopath who manipulated psychological and IQ tests to make himself seem troubled.

DeAnn and Alicia had celebrated their birthdays the month before Ault killed them, Donnelly said. And DeAnn, a junior school safety patrol officer, maintained A's in school, doing her homework on a park bench.

Polay, the defense attorney, begged for mercy.

"Someone who is sick, someone who is abnormal, someone who is not right should not be killed," Polay said. "Look at the reasons that these things happen."

He launched into a laundry list of Ault's maladies: mental illness, post-traumatic stress disorder, major depressive disorder, pedophilia and brain damage.

Ault was repeatedly sexually victimized as a child by his older brother, Polay said, adding that Ault's mother knew about it and did nothing. Ault, a married father of a young son at the time of the murders, confessed because "he wanted to clear his conscience," Polay said.

He told the jurors the chances were "slim to none" that Broward Circuit Judge Marc Gold would not uphold their recommendation. If sentenced to life, he added, Ault would never be released on parole.

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