After deliberating for about eight hours over two days, a Bucks County jury convicted Alfonso Sanchez in a 2007 double murder and a related plot to kill a key witness to the crime.
He was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder, as well as criminal solicitation to commit murder, conspiracy, witness intimidation, and related offenses.
Sanchez, 41, has been on death row since his 2008 conviction in the deaths of Mendez Thomas, 22, and Lisa Diaz, 27, inside a unit at the Bucks Landing apartments. But a prosecutorial error concerning DNA evidence led to a retrial for Sanchez,On the night of the murders, prosecutors said, Sanchez went to the apartment under false pretenses: He told Thomas he wanted to buy marijuana from him, but in reality, he planned to attack him over an unspecified conflict.
In emotional testimony during the trial, Carmona identified Sanchez as the shooter. On a 911 call, played in court, she was clear to dispatchers, saying: “His name is Alfonso.”was recorded on phone calls soliciting his girlfriend’s help in hiring a gang member to kill CarmonaProsecutors, led by Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintruab, seized on that as evidence of Sanchez’s consciousness of guilt, and urged jurors to convict him.
“Let’s put it simply: People who are innocent of murder don’t try to have living witnesses killed,” Weintraub said in his closing argument Friday afternoon.
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