Rick DiCresce

No one said a word.

At the time, all Rick DiCresce could see were the photos prosecutors had showed them that day of the Escobedo family — the father, mother and 3- and 4-year-old sons lying dead together on the side of the road.

Even now, days after he and 11 other jurors recommended that Ricardo Sanchez Jr. and Daniel Troya should die for killing the children, DiCresce can close his eyes and see 4-year-old Luis Julian Escobedo’s head on the medical examiner’s table — a patch of black hair missing, blood still showing from the place where his killer stood over him and fired a final shot into his tiny skull.

“I said it during the deliberations, I still believe it, that I don’t think that the children had to be killed,” he said. “I don’t think they would have made good witnesses at the ages of 3 and 4.”

Death was not a sentence DiCresce ever wanted to hand down. The 71-year-old retired polymer chemist said he thought prosecutors would strike him as a potential juror after he told them that although he has always believed in the morality and legality of the death penalty, he thought it was grossly overused.

DiCresce said he looked for any reason to keep from voting for death. But in the end, there was no other aspect of the case — even the most compelling testimony on behalf of Sanchez and Troya — that could erase the line he said the killers crossed.

“The children were sacrosanct,” he said, adding that Luis Julian and Luis Damian were the only innocents in the case other than Sanchez’s 6-year-old son, Ricardo III.

There were two things, however, that DiCresce said jurors spent the most time discussing before returning their verdict.

The first was what they believed was the equal culpability of Danny Varela, the head of the drug organization for which Sanchez and Troya worked and for which the boys’ father, Jose Luis Escobedo, acted as a supplier.

DiCresce said he doesn’t quite accept the prosecution’s theory that Varela ordered the killings to escape a debt to Escobedo. He said he thought it was more likely that the family was killed to score the cocaine Escobedo was carrying.

Either way, DiCresce said, almost all of the jurors believed that Varela was behind the murders.

“I’ll say this, and I said this several times while we were back there, the biggest travesty in this case is that Danny Varela wasn’t sitting at that table,” he said.

Assistant U.S Attorney John Kastrenakes’ closing argument in the guilt phase of the trial provided the only explanation as to why that never happened, DiCresce said. Kastrenakes said authorities didn’t have enough evidence to charge Varela, but were still investigating and would charge him if they found more.

After the verdicts, Varela’s attorney, Robert Gershman, said he doubted those charges would ever materialize.

The jurors also thought that the boys’ parents should bear some responsibility, that it was a shame that the children got caught up with them in the drug trade that ultimately claimed all their lives, DiCresce said.

In the initial votes during deliberations, nine jurors voted for death and three weren’t sure, he said. After a weekend break, jurors seemed to overcome their disagreements and eventually recommended the death penalty for the boys’ deaths and life sentences for the parents’ deaths, DiCresce said.

Troya and Sanchez are scheduled to be sentenced next month. U.S. Senior District Judge Daniel T.K. Hurley is bound by the jury’s unanimous recommendations.

Varela faces a mandatory life sentence for related drug charges. He and two other members of the drug ring, Liana Lee Lopez and Juan Gutierrez, also will be sentenced next month.

Two other jurors reached by phone this week declined to discuss the case, saying it was too soon after the verdicts.

Both were with DiCresce during lunch that day, sitting in silence as they pondered the horror they had seen.

After several minutes, someone finally broke the silence, though DiCresce can’t remember who it was or what he or she said.

“I don’t think this is something that anyone relishes,” he said of imposing the death sentence. “I think it’s something that should be reserved for only the worst crimes, and this is what this was.”

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