HOUSTON, Texas (AP) – Jurors began deliberating yesterday on a possible death sentence for a Jamaican truck driver convicted of transporting illegal immigrants in the deadliest US human-smuggling case, in which 19 people died from dehydration and suffocation inside an overheated trailer.

Tyrone Williams, 35, was convicted last month on 58 counts of conspiracy, harbouring and transporting immigrants. More than 70 immigrants from Mexico, Central America and the Dominican Republic were packed inside Williams’ trailer in the failed 2003 smuggling attempt from South Texas to Houston.

Jury deliberations followed days of tearful testimony by Williams’ relatives and friends who urged jurors to spare him the death sentence. Williams is the only one of 14 people charged facing the death penalty.

Defence attorney Craig Washington told jurors Monday that Williams gave water to the immigrants before he abandoned the trailer near Victoria, about 100 miles (160 kilometres) south-west of Houston, Williams also has admitted guilt and expressed remorse, signs he could be rehabilitated, he said.

Washington said his client made a mistake.

“But he doesn’t deserve to die,” he said.

Assistant US Attorney Daniel Rodriguez told jurors the victims’ relatives deserve a just sentence for Williams.

“Whether you are here legally or not, the value of a human life in this country is the same,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez said Williams deserved a death sentence because he alone could have freed the immigrants before they died, but chose not to open the trailer’s doors. He said Williams also could have turned on the trailer’s air-conditioning unit, which might have prevented the deaths.

The trial was the second for Williams, a Jamaican citizen who lived in Schenectady, New York. An appeals court overturned a verdict against him in 2005 when a jury convicted him on 38 transporting counts, but could not agree on his role in the smuggling attempt and were deadlocked on the 20 other counts.