A Bucks County jury sentenced the gunman in a 2007 double murder to death

Alfonso Sanchez was sentenced to death Wednesday after his conviction for killing two people during a violent outburst in a Warminster apartment in 2007.

Sanchez, 41, was found guilty on Monday of two counts of first-degree murder and related crimes in the deaths of Mendez Thomas and Lisa Diaz. He was also convicted of attempting to orchestrate a plot, from behind bars, to have a witness killed to prevent her from testifying against him.

The death sentence arose from the shooting of Diaz, whom he killed after first shooting Thomas at point-blank range. Prosecutors cited Thomas’ slaying as an aggravating factor as they argued that Sanchez should face the death penalty for the subsequent killing of Diaz. Sanchez will be sentenced on the remaining charges separately, sometime in the coming days.

District Attorney Matt Weintraub, who prosecuted the case, said afterward that the “jury got it right.”

“I’m ecstatic that I could bring this to a close for the family after they waited patiently for 16 years,” he said. “It was a terrible ordeal for them to go through it again, but we feel vindicated that the jury rendered the verdict that they rendered.”

Sanchez’s lawyers, Frank Genovese, Mark Eastburn and Niels Eriksen, declined to comment outside of the courtroom, saying only that they respected the jury’s decision.

Sanchez’s trial before Bucks County Judge Alan Rubenstein was his second. He was convicted and sentenced to death in the case in 2008, but after a prosecutorial error regarding DNA evidence, he was granted a retrial.

Weintraub, in addressing the jurors Wednesday morning, said their work was already complete. By convicting Sanchez, he said, they had already established three aggravating circumstances required for the death penalty to be applied in the murder case.

“Your job couldn’t be more serious,” Weintraub said. “But the work, the effort, the decision, you’ve already done it.”

Sanchez, he said, killed someone while committing a felony, in this case a burglary, after tricking Thomas into letting him into his Warminster apartment under the guise of buying marijuana. He then shot Thomas in the head, along with Diaz, who owed him money for cocaine. He put other people’s lives at risk while doing so, Weintraub said, including Jessica Carmona and her children, who were in the apartment at the time.

Weintraub also urged the jurors to consider the impact Diaz’s murder had on her family. In what he called “heart-wrenching” testimony, Diaz’s family described the “everlasting impact” they feel from her loss, one that has spanned generations.

In an unusual move, Sanchez prevented his lawyers from presenting any mitigating evidence that might have persuaded the jury to spare him the death penalty. As a consequence of that decision, lawyer Niels Eriksen briefly addressed the jurors Wednesday and urged them to sentence Sanchez to life in prison.

“You have the ability to check ‘life,’ and I’m asking you do so in this case,” Eriksen said.

Weintraub, seizing on that lack of competing evidence, told jurors the decision was clear.

“There is no scale, there’s nothing to weigh,” he said. “There’s no other side to this case.”

Afterward, Weintraub said Sanchez’s decision to require his lawyers to essentially provide no rebuttal was “extraordinarily rare.”

“I’ve been doing this for 30 years and argued many capital cases, and never has it occurred in any case I’ve been connected to,” he said. “I can’t speak for the defendant. He made the choice and he’ll have to live with it.”

It remained unclear why Sanchez made that decision. Still, despite the jury’s decision, it is unlikely that Sanchez will be put to death.

Gov. Josh Shapiro, who has called on the state legislature to abolish the death penalty, has said he will refuse to sign any death warrants.

Sanchez’s previous death warrant was signed in 2015 by then-Gov. Tom Corbett but stalled by a moratorium on executions that was later put in place by Gov. Tom Wolf.

The last person to be executed in Pennsylvania was Philadelphia serial killer Garry Heidnik in 1999.