Two men from Illinois were among the 37 people spared from death row by President Joe Biden on Monday. One was a doctor who killed a witness in a fraud case and the other an ex-Marine who killed a naval officer in Virginia and later pleaded guilty to killing two girls in Zion.
Ronald Mikos, a podiatrist, was convicted in May of 2005 of shooting Joyce Brannon in her church basement apartment to keep her from telling a federal grand jury how he defrauded Medicare. Prosecutors said he shot the nurse and former patient, who was disabled, six times at point-blank range.
Mikos was the last person sentenced to death in Illinois.
Also receiving a commutation Monday was Jorge Avila Torrez, who had been sentenced to death by a federal jury for strangling naval officer Amanda Snell, 20, inside her barrack in Arlington, Virginia, in 2009.
Torrez later pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting and stabbing to death two girls — Laura Hobbs, 8, and Krystal Tobias, 9 — who had been riding their bicycles in Zion in 2005.
Biden said in a statement that he was commuting the death sentences of Mikos, Torrez and the 35 others because it was “consistent with the moratorium my administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.”
“In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted,” he added, referring to President-elect Donald Trump, an outspoken proponent of expanding capital punishment.
Mikos’ attorneys released a statement saying they were “grateful to President Biden for granting him clemency. Offering Mr. Mikos the possibility of peace and dignity in the final years of his life is an act of mercy.”
They noted that Mikos “is the oldest man on federal death row at 76 years old and suffers from advancing age-related neurological decline and others serious health issues.”
Mikos had proclaimed he was innocent when he was sentenced in 2006, telling U.S. District Judge Ronald A. Guzman, “Your Honor, I did not kill Joyce Brannon.”
Mikos, 57, became only the second person sentenced to capital punishment in the history of Chicago’s Dirksen Federal Courthouse.
His attorneys had suggested at the trial that drug pushers might have hidden narcotics in Brannon’s apartment in a North Side church basement, returned to get them and murdered her.
But the jury found him guilty of murder and of defrauding Medicare out of $1.8 million by billing it for thousands of foot operations he had never performed.
The jury recommended the death penalty despite testimony of psychiatrists that Mikos had numerous mental problems, including a schizotypal personality and photos that defense attorneys said showed that he had holes where brain tissue should be.
They said the severe brain degeneration might have been caused by abuse of alcohol and his frequent use of a potent prescription painkiller.
No members of Brannon’s family were present at the sentencing. But prosecutors released a letter in which her sister, Janet Bunch, said Mikos acted “out of greed and obviously low or no morals.
“When he realized that he was caught and faced serious personal consequences for his greed, he chose to take a human life in a violent and merciless way. … I feel that Ronald Mikos forfeited any right to leniency when he planned and carried out the cold-blood execution of my sister.”
Mikos, meanwhile, continues to fight his conviction. In 2020, he filed a motion contending he was not competent to stand trial and that his lawyers were not effective. He also claimed that his death sentence violated the Eighth Amendment because of his mental illness.
In September this year, a federal judge said some of Mikos’ contentions merited further review and ordered both sides in the case to meet on the issues he raised. A status hearing is set for Feb. 19 before U.S. District Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer.
Torrez — the other person from Illinois spared from death row — was a Marine corporal who lived in a room on the same deck as Snell’s, eight doors away.
Torrez later told a prisoner in the Arlington County Detention Center that he entered Snell’s room through her unlocked door, jumped on her as she slept in her bed, bound her wrists with the power cord from her laptop computer and strangled her with the rest of the cord, federal officials said.
Torrez stated that he then dragged Snell’s body from the bed to a wall locker, where he hid her remains. Snell was discovered there by her Navy supervisor on July 13, 2009, when she failed to report for duty.
About five years later, Torrez pleaded guilty to killing the two girls in Zion. They were discovered by Jerry Hobbs, Laura Hobbs’ father, in a park not far from their homes in 2005. After 24 hours of interrogation, officials said Hobbs confessed to the murders and he spent five years in jail awaiting trial.
Charges were dropped after DNA evidence from Laura’s body was matched to Torrez’s DNA, which had gone into a national police database after his arrest in Virginia. Torrez was a friend of Krystal’s half-brother and was 16 at the time of the girls’ murder.
Associated Press contributed