President Joe Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 of 40 federal inmates on death row on Monday — including cold-blooded murderers who had killed entire families, and predators who had slaughtered innocent children.
For example, Ricardo Sanchez, Jr., and Daniel Troya had been convicted for the brutal murder of an entire family. As Palm Beach, Florida, CBS affiliate 12 News recalled, the two “shot and killed a mother, father, and their two young children”:
The murders occurred early in the morning of October 13, 2006, when the pair stopped the family’s Jeep Cherokee along the Turnpike, outside of Fort Pierce.
Each family member – Jose Luis Escobedo, Luis Damian Escobedo, Luis Julian Escobedo, and Yessica Guerro Escobedo – was shot and left their bodies there. Sanchez and Troya drove off in both their Dodge Ram van and the Escobedo’s black Jeep Cherokee.
The Palm Beach Post added:
In 2009, Daniel “Homer” Troya and Ricardo “Ricky” Sanchez, Jr. were convicted of carjacking resulting in death and other felonies for their roles in the 2006 deaths of Jose “Lou” Escobedo, his wife Yessica, and their two young sons aged 4 and 3. Their bodies were found riddled with bullets off the side of Florida’s Turnpike in Port St. Lucie.
Federal prosecutors said that their drug trafficking boss, Danny Varela, ordered the hit to wipe out a large drug debt and to steal 15 kilos of cocaine Escobedo, who was the group’s cocaine smuggler, had with him at the time. Sanchez and Troya followed the Escobedos north to the Daytona Beach area where Jose made the drug pickup, and then killed them on the Turnpike, prosecutors said.
Another death row prisoner, Thomas Sanders, had been convicted in 2014 for kidnapping an murdering a 12-year-old girl. The FBI recalled his crimes in a press release at the time of his sentencing:
Sanders met Suellen Roberts, 31, in the summer of 2010 when Roberts rented a storage unit at a warehouse in Las Vegas where Sanders worked. Roberts and Sanders began dating, and approximately two months later Roberts agreed that she and her 12-year-old daughter, Lexis, would go on a trip with Sanders over the Labor Day weekend to a wildlife park near the Grand Canyon. As they were returning to Nevada after three days of traveling, Sanders pulled off Interstate 40 in a remote location in the Arizona desert and shot Suellen Roberts in the head and forced Lexis Roberts into the car, keeping her captive.
Sanders drove several days across the country before he murdered Lexis Roberts in a wooded area in Catahoula Parish, Louisiana. Evidence at trial established that Sanders shot Lexis Roberts four times, cut her throat and left her body in the woods, where a hunter found her body on Oct. 8, 2010.
…
At trial, the jury heard a recorded confession in which Sanders admitted killing the mother and daughter.
Another murderer whose sentence Biden commuted was Philadelphia drug kingpin Kaboni Savage. The local Philadelphia NBC affiliate recalled that Savage “was convicted of murdering 12 people, which included a family of six killed in a brutal firebombing.”
It added:
The family Savage firebombed in 2004 belonged to Eugene Coleman, his former confident turned FBI informant. In retaliation, Savage killed Coleman’s mother plus his cousin, his infant son and three other children. Coleman was in prison at the time.
Although Savage was also incarcerated at the time of the firebombing, he orchestrated the attack through phone calls and prison visits and communicated with other inmates through prison plumbing pipes.
The only three federal inmates still on death row are Dylan Roof, who murdered nine black parishoners in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; Robert Bowers, who murdered eleven Jews in the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in 2018; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the two Islamic terrorist brothers behind the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013.
A full list of the 40 federal inmates (now 37) formerly on death row can be found here.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
