CHESAPEAKE, Va. (Reuters) - Jurors on Tuesday spared the life of teenage sniper Lee Malvo after deliberating less than nine hours on options that included the death penalty for two counts of capital murder.

Malvo, 18, who the same jury convicted last week of the murder of FBI analyst Linda Franklin, 47, as part of a string of random shootings in and around the U.S. capital last year, sat with one arm resting on the defense table and the other hand covering his mouth as a court official read the sentences.

Defense lawyer Craig Cooley patted Malvo on the back after the sentences were read out. Judge Jane Roush set the final sentencing date for March 10.

A different jury last month recommended death for Malvo's accomplice, John Muhammad, 42, who was convicted of another murder in the series of shootings.

With the Christmas holiday just days away, Cooley had appealed to the jury in closing arguments on Monday to bring the spirit of the season, traditionally meant to be a time of generosity and charity, into their deliberations.

Cooley quoted the words of popular Christmas carol "Silent Night" to tell jurors that "redeeming grace" would come to Malvo despite the gravity of his crimes.

His hand on Malvo's shoulder, Cooley urged the jury to spare the life of "this child," who he said had been led terribly astray by Muhammad whom he trusted as a father figure.

In coming to its decision, the 12-person jury found both that Malvo's crimes were vile or inhuman and that he could commit future acts of violence and posed a continuing danger to society.

But it took into account mitigating evidence which included Malvo's youth and unsettled childhood.

Prosecutor Robert Horan argued that justice demanded the death sentence for Malvo's cold-blooded killing, part of a plan to extort $10 million from the government in exchange for an end to the "body bags.

Horan replayed excerpts from tapes of Malvo's interviews with law officers after his arrest in which he coolly described several of the killings, and once more showed the courtroom pictures of some of the victims, both smiling in life and in the bloody contortions of death.

"If there is such a thing as vileness, that is vileness," Horan said, adding that Malvo was "no dummy," had shown "not an ounce of remorse" and boasted in letters to a fellow prisoner after his arrest that no prison could hold him.

Malvo was 17 when he and Muhammad, a Gulf War veteran, roamed the Washington region in an old car with a hole bored in the trunk for shooting random human targets.