A Bucks County man is on trial for the second time in a 2007 double murder

For fifteen years, Alfonso Sanchez has sat on death row, convicted of a double murder he insists he did not commit.

Sanchez, 41, was convicted of killing two people in a Warminster apartment in 2007 during a drug deal gone bad.

But a prosecutorial mistake paved the way for a new trial, in which Sanchez has pleaded not guilty and insisted that the crime was the work of another man.

His bid for freedom, though, is complicated by the fact that prosecutors say he ordered the killing of a key witness in the case. And because of that, he now faces charges of criminal solicitation to commit murder, conspiracy, witness intimidation, and related offenses.

“He tried to finish the job,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Matthew Lannetti said Monday during his opening statement at Sanchez’s retrial. “He tried to have people kill [a witness] so she couldn’t sit in that witness box and tell you what happened that night in that apartment.”

Sanchez was recorded on prison calls making arrangements to have criminal associates kill a witness in the case, Jessica Carmona, according to court records.

“Do people who are not guilty of crimes try to have witnesses against them murdered?” Lannetti asked.

» READ MORE: A Bucks County man appealing a murder conviction plotted to kill a witness, prosecutors say

Carmona was inside an apartment at Bucks Landing in October 2007 when the shooting took place, authorities said. Sanchez drove to the apartment with two other men, Steven Miranda and Alex Martinez, Lannetti said, saying he wanted to buy marijuana from Mendez Thomas, who lived there.

In reality, prosecutors said, the three were there to confront Thomas over a drug debt. But Thomas wasn’t alone. Carmona, his girlfriend, was there with her two children. As was Lisa Diaz, a longtime friend of the couple who was babysitting Carmona’s kids.

Sanchez shot Thomas in the head at point-blank range, along with Diaz, who owed him money for cocaine, prosecutors said.

Carmona was shot in the leg as she attempted to shield her children from harm. As the sole survivor of the shooting, she became the prosecution’s star witness at trial, and, more recently, the subject of an alleged — and unsuccessful — plot to silence her.

Sanchez’s attorney, Frank Genovese, said in court Monday that Sanchez hadn’t gone to the apartment that night to harm anyone. He just wanted to buy marijuana, the lawyer said..

“The only thing that matters in a case like this is the truth,” he said.

Genovese, disputing the prosecution’s version of events, suggested that Miranda, who had been dating Diaz and worried that she might be pregnant, killed her and Thomas and wounded Carmona.

Miranda and Martinez turned themselves in the day after the shooting. Sanchez eluded police for a week, but was eventually found hiding in a bathtub inside a house in Horsham, surrounded, Lannetti said, by hair dye, cash, and newspaper clippings describing the search for him, “trophies of the carnage he inflicted.”

Miranda was convicted of two counts of murder and sentenced to two consecutive life terms. Sanchez was sentenced to death after his conviction, but filed an appeal. During the review process, Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintraub discovered DNA reports had not been provided to the defense at trial, including one that showed that Diaz had Miranda’s DNA underneath her fingernails.

Weintraub granted Sanchez a retrial in 2017.

» READ MORE: From 2017: "Bucks judge issues new trial for death-row inmate"

Lannetti told jurors the DNA reports were a “false flag,” especially in light of the more recent criminal charges Sanchez faces.

But Genovese cast doubt on the trustworthiness of the witnesses lined up to testify over the coming days, saying they “had reason to comport their version of the case with the commonwealth’s to get preferential treatment” in their own legal matters.

One such witness, he said, is Karrol Lloyd, Sanchez’s ex-girlfriend, who briefly served as his power of attorney, and helped provide evidence of the alleged attempt to kill Carmona. Genovese said Lloyd was upset after learning Sanchez was dating other women, and, in retaliation, began cooperating with prosecutors.

“[Sanchez] may have said some things, but he never intended for Jessica to be killed,” Genovese said.

Regardless of the outcome of the trial, Sanchez will spend the next few decades in prison. He pleaded guilty last April to operating a corrupt organization and drug charges for running a drug ring that smuggled suboxone into the Bucks County Correctional Facility through legal documents. He was sentenced to 10-to-40 years in state prison.

Sanchez’s murder trial is expected to last two weeks before Bucks County Court Judge Alan Rubenstein.