HUNTSVILLE, Texas — A 51-year-old North Texas resident was set to receive a lethal injection Wednesday evening for the brutal murders of his girlfriend and her young child almost 13 years ago.
Cedric Ricks received a death sentence for the May 2013 murders of Roxann Sanchez, 30, and her 8-year-old son Anthony Figueroa inside their Bedford apartment, located in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. During the violent attack, Sanchez’s older son Marcus Figueroa, then 12, sustained injuries but survived.
The execution was scheduled to take place after 6 p.m. Central Time at the Huntsville state prison facility, located approximately 70 miles north of Houston.
Ricks’ legal team filed an emergency petition with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to halt the execution, claiming prosecutors improperly excluded potential jurors based on their race, violating his constitutional protections. Courts have previously rejected other appeals from Ricks that challenged his legal representation and sought to exclude certain evidence.
The Supreme Court established in its 1986 Batson v. Kentucky decision that removing jurors due to racial considerations breaches the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
“At trial, Ricks already suspected that the State had singled out minority jurors to exclude them from his jury,” Ricks’ attorneys said in their petition to the Supreme Court.
Defense lawyers contended that prosecutorial notes from jury selection, which weren’t discovered until 2021, demonstrate that prosecutors targeted minority jurors for removal.
However, the Texas Attorney General’s Office maintained that court documentation proves the prosecution’s jury selection choices were “race neutral,” with lower courts already determining that prosecutors acted without discrimination.
Ricks “viciously stabbed his girlfriend Roxann and her eight-year-old son Anthony to death,” the attorney general’s office said. “The public has a strong interest in enforcement of Ricks’ sentence.”
On Monday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles rejected Ricks’ petition for either a 90-day delay or sentence commutation.
According to prosecutors, the tragedy unfolded when Ricks and Sanchez engaged in a heated dispute inside their residence. When Sanchez’s two children from her previous relationship — Anthony and Marcus Figueroa — attempted to intervene in the altercation, the situation escalated.
Court documents reveal that Ricks seized a kitchen knife and repeatedly stabbed Sanchez. Marcus Figueroa fled to his bedroom closet and attempted to contact emergency services. Following Anthony Figueroa’s death, Ricks continued his attack on Marcus, who managed to survive by pretending to be dead. Ricks left unharmed his infant son Isaiah, who was 9 months old at the time.
After fleeing the scene, Ricks was subsequently apprehended in Oklahoma.
During court proceedings, Ricks acknowledged having anger management problems and claimed he was protecting himself from the two boys who had intervened to help their mother.
“Explaining my rage, I was upset. Things happen. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I wish I could bring them back, like, right now,” said Ricks, who also apologized for the killings.
The day prior to the fatal stabbings, Ricks had made a court appearance on charges related to a previous assault against Sanchez.
Should the execution proceed as planned, Ricks would become the second individual executed in Texas this year and the sixth nationwide. Texas leads all states in the total number of executions performed.
Meanwhile, Charles “Sonny” Burton, a 75-year-old Alabama death row inmate, was originally scheduled for execution Thursday. However, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey commuted his sentence Tuesday to life imprisonment without parole. Burton had been condemned to death for a 1991 robbery-related killing, despite not being the shooter.
