Tucson judge adds 65 years to border activist’s death-row sentence
Death row inmate Shawna Forde was sentenced to an additional 65 years Monday in the May 2009 deaths of a 9-year-old Arivaca girl and the girl’s father.
Forde declined to make a statement prior to Judge John Leonardo’s imposition of the sentences in Pima County Superior Court.
Forde, 43, was convicted in February of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to die for orchestrating the deaths of Raul Junior Flores, 29, and Brisenia Flores.
She was also convicted of the attempted first-degree murder of Flores’ wife, Gina Gonzalez, and five burglary, aggravated assault and armed robbery counts. Leonardo imposed 10 or 15 years on each of those counts and ran all but one of them consecutive to each other and consecutive to the death sentences.
The Floreses died May 30, 2009, after Junior Flores let a couple pretending to be law enforcement officers into his home in Arivaca. Gonzalez testified she and Junior, her husband of 13 years, were shot after he expressed doubts about their identity.
The gunman assured Brisenia he wasn’t going to shoot her, but then shot her twice while she pleaded for her life, Gonzalez testified.
Jurors were told Forde needed money for her border protection group, Minutemen American Defense, and recruited some men to rob drug smugglers near the border. All the invaders got was a handful of inexpensive jewelry that was later found in Forde’s possession, prosecutors said.
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Brisenia Flores