Bridge deaths dad faces execution

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A man who threw four children to their deaths from a bridge has been sentenced to death in the US state of Alabama.

The judge ordered that Lam Luong be shown pictures of the children every day he is on death row.

Luong, a Vietnamese refugee, looked towards his common-law wife as he was sentenced and apologised to her through an interpreter.

A jury in Mobile convicted him in March of murdering the children by throwing them 80ft (24m) into the sea.

The three youngest children - Hannah, two, Lindsey, one, and four-month-old Danny - were Luong's with his common-law wife, Kieu Phan.

The eldest, three-year-old Ryan, was Ms Phan's child from an earlier relationship.

'Drug addiction'

They died when Luong, an unemployed shrimper, dropped them from the Dauphin Island Bridge near Mobile after an argument with their mother in January 2008.

His defence had urged Circuit Judge Charles Graddick to sentence Luong to life in prison without parole, saying he was addicted to drugs and depressed.

But the judge said the aggravating circumstances were too great.

He said the children must have felt "sheer terror" during their fall from the bridge, and were alive when they hit the water.

An appeal is automatic under the death penalty law in Alabama.