Family slain

Jose and Yessica Escobedo with sons Luis Julian (left) and Luis Damian (right). Husband, wife and two children from Greenacres found shot to death off Florida’s Turnpike in northern Port St. Lucie. More news, photos

WEST PALM BEACH — In the end, jurors decided, the murders of 4-year-old Luis Julian Escobedo and 3-year-old Luis Damian Escobedo were too much to forgive.

They unanimously condemned Ricardo Sanchez Jr. and Daniel Troya to pay for the boys’ lives with their own today, marking
the first time in decades that a federal jury in Florida has handed down a death sentence.

The children, shot to death in October 2006 along with their parents on Florida’s Turnpike, became the focal point of outrage as among the only purely innocent faces during a months-long trial and sentencing hearing that pushed jurors into the world of drugs, guns and violence.

After four days of deliberating, the jury decided that Sanchez and Troya should receive life sentences for the killings of the boys’ parents, Jose Luis Escobedo, 28, and Yessica Escobedo, 25.

Jose Luis was a cocaine supplier to Sanchez and Troya’s boss, Danny Varela, and was likely killed for the thefts of the drugs he was carrying at the time and to clear Varela from a debt.

Both Sanchez and Troya remained silent as long as the jurors were in the room Tuesday. But once the jury left and U.S. Senior District Judge Daniel T.K. Hurley began speaking to attorneys about a sentencing hearing, Troya could no longer hold his words.

“Y’all are already gonna kill me,” he said. “I don’t need a sentencing hearing, I don’t need a sentence investigation, I don’t need nothing. Just add my (expletive) up and send me to FDC (federal detention center).”

He then stood up and threw a water bottle toward prosecutors. U.S. marshals tackled and restrained him as his family members stood up. His sister and grandmother shouted his name, saying, “Daniel, no.”

Troya’s attorney, James Eisenberg, later said his client was upset about how he was characterized during the trial.

Rosario Escobedo and Sara Guerrero, the mothers of Jose Luis and Yessica Escobedo, sat silently and watched the exchange.

No one inside the courtroom translated the verdicts in Spanish for Sara Guerrero right away, although she figured from Troya’s reaction that he was displeased with the outcome. Still, tears welled up in her eyes when she heard the sentence was death for slaying the boys.

Before the verdict, Rosario Escobedo echoed the words of Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Carlton when he asked jurors how many people would have to be killed before a death sentence became appropriate.

“It’s like he said: If not for this, then what?” she asked.

Guerrero’s sister and Yessica’s aunt, Monica Moreno, said in a phone conversation Tuesday evening from Brownsville, Texas, that family members had heard about the verdicts and were as happy as they could be under the circumstances.

“Nothing is ever going to bring them back, and their memory is going to stay with us no matter what,” Moreno said. “But we’re satisfied that at least we’re getting justice.”

Eisenberg and Sanchez’s attorney, Donnie Murrell, tried in vain to convince jurors to spare the men’s lives, resting their defense in part on Sanchez’s low I.Q. and Troya’s lingering trauma from seeing his friend shot and killed when he was 12.

Eisenberg especially tried to convince jurors that Sanchez and Troya should be spared from a death sentence because Varela was equally culpable but was not facing death. Varela was not charged in the murders but faces mandatory life sentences for several gun and drug charges for which all three were convicted.

Witnesses on Troya’s behalf described him as a troubled young man, one who though lovingly nicknamed “Homer Simpson” exhibited strange and at times suicidal behavior for which he had no explanation.

The most compelling testimony on Sanchez’s behalf in the penalty phase came from his 6-year-old son, Ricardo Sanchez III. In a videotaped statement, he said he loved his father and liked going to see him and talk to him, even if he was “at jail.”
Sanchez’s and Troya’s attorneys say they will appeal the sentence. The men’s families left the courthouse in tears, declining to comment.

St. Lucie County sheriff’s Detective Fred Wilson, one of the first investigators in the case when the boys were found cradled in the arms of their mother, said the verdicts avenged their deaths.

“I think today we got justice,” he said.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 at 5:19 pm and is filed under Courts, Crime, Escobedo trial, Stuart. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.