A paedophile asked a judge yesterday to give him the death penalty- by lethal injection.

John Grundy, 58, told his lawyers he wanted to be sentenced to death for having sex with a 12-year-old girl.

As Judge Guy Whitburn jailed him for ten years, Grundy made jabbing motions and said: "What about the lethal injection?"

It was Grundy's third sex conviction including attacks on young boys.

In 1971, under the alias Granville Newton, he indecently assaulted two boys aged five and six and he was put on probation. In 1976, he sexually attacked a woman on a country path near Halifax, West Yorkshire, and was jailed for six months for indecent assault.

Grundy groomed the 12-year-old who was staying with her foster parents on a caravan site in Redcar, east Cleveland.

He took her to the beach, got her drunk on cheap wine and had sex with her, said Sarah Mallett, prosecuting at Teesside Crown Court.

But the Fingerprint Bureau revealed that his prints matched those of Newton.

Katharine Dunn, mitigating, said Grundy was a troubled individual who claimed that as an 18-month-old toddler he killed his grandfather with a pitchfork and that he was shot as a soldier in Ulster. Neither was true.

The judge told him: "I look at you as a dangerous man, dangerous to women and dangerous to young girls."

Grundy, of Queen Street, Redcar, was given a ten-year jail sentence with six years to serve and four years on extended supervision licence. He was ordered to register as a sex offender for life and disqualified from working with children.

He admitted rape of a child under 13 on July 1 last year, sexual assault and causing a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity.