A Bucks County judge Wednesday, formally sentenced Alfonso Sanchez to death – a sentence handed down by a Bucks County jury earlier this month – for the killing of Lisa Diaz inside a Warminster Township apartment in October 2007.
Sanchez, 41, formerly of Philadelphia, was additionally sentenced to life without parole for killing Mendez Thomas in the apartment that same day and a consecutive 52½ to 105 years for other crimes, including a plot to kill a woman who survived the 2007 rampage in the Bucks Landing apartments.
The sentence was handed down by Common Pleas Judge Alan M. Rubenstein, marking the second time Sanchez was convicted and sentenced to death for the 2007 murders of Diaz, 27, and Thomas, 22.
In 2008, Sanchez was found guilty of first-degree murder and was sentenced to death, but in 2017, he was granted a new trial after it was discovered that DNA lab reports were not turned over to his attorneys during the initial trial. While awaiting the new trial, Sanchez solicited three others to have the living witness against him killed, but Bucks County Detectives thwarted his plot, the county District Attorney’s office said.
In the new trial, Sanchez was convicted by a Bucks County jury on two counts of first-degree murder, and counts of burglary, aggravated assault, recklessly endangering another person and related offenses. Additionally, the jury found Sanchez guilty of solicitation to commit murder in a plot to kill the surviving victim.
After the jury’s verdict on May 3, Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintraub said, “I’m ecstatic that I could bring this to a close for the family after they waited patiently for 16 years. 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.”
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