Photo: CBS 12
The state will pursue charges against two men who spent years on federal death row for the execution-style murders of a family of four along the Treasure Coast.
Daniel Troya and Ricardo Sanchez Junior were sentenced to die in 2009 for killing the Escobedo family along the shoulder of the Turnpike in St. Lucie County. The children were ages 3 and 4.
But District 19 State Attorney Tom Bakkedahl says an order of Clemency was signed by the Biden administration just before Christmas last year.
"On the way out of the front door of the White House, within less than a month of departing the White House, a cabal within the administration by utilization of an auto pen or by the exertion of some undue influence on a clearly diminished president, signed an executive order, or excuse me, a clemency order, granting clemency to the men who murdered these children without process and without justice, without inquiry, without involvement, without knowledge under the cover of darkness, this was done."
So he says the state will seek the death penalty for Troya and Sanchez.
"This is simply a pursuit of justice. This is not political. This is not personal. This is the right thing to do."
On why he believes the Biden administration was playing politics when the sentences were commuted for these inmates, but not all 40 of them.
"Because if you do the math, there are three defendants that still sit on federal death row. And if your principles are the death penalty is wrong, then you commute them all. But you didn't commute them all because they couldn't take that political heat, whoever made this decision."
The three-remaining federal death row inmates are Dylann Roof, who shot up an African-American church, the Boston Marathon bomber and the Tree of Life Synagogue shooter.
Bakkedahl says Florida law allows defendants to be prosecuted in both state and federal court for the same crime under the concept of dual sovereignty.
He made the announcement along side St. Lucie Sheriff Richard Del Toro, who pledged his agency's full support and assistance into the investigations ahead.
Bakkedahl also said that he expects the full support of the U.S. Attorney General and former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.