On September 15, 2001, just four days after the horrific events of 9/11, Frank Silva Roque drove by a gas station and shot its owner, Balbir Singh Sodhi, 49, in Mesa, Arizona.

The crime shook the Indian American community across the US. Today some feel justice was done when the court rejected Roque's claim of insanity and convicted him of murder and attempted murder.

Roque could get the death sentence for killing Sodhi, whom he allegedly mistook for an Arab in what is widely seen as a racially motivated attack.

Sikhs in the US have found themselves particularly vulnerable in some parts of the country where their turbans are seen as akin to those worn by Osama bin Laden and his ilk, who are considered responsible for planning the World Trade Centre and Pentagon attacks two years ago.

The jury took two days to decide that 44-year-old Roque's insanity claim could not be sustained. Roque apparently went to another gas station after shooting Sodhi and tried to kill another man said to be of Lebanese descent as well as an Afghan family's house. No one else was injured.

Despite arguments by the defence attorney as well as a psychiatrist, the jury went with prosecutor Vince Imbordino's accusations that Roque acted out of anger and hate.