Judge sets Bedford man’s execution date for killings of woman, 8-year-old boy

A man who stabbed his girlfriend and her 8-year-old son to death with kitchen knives in a Bedford apartment in 2013 is to be executed by the state on March 11, a state district judge in Tarrant County ordered on Monday.

A jury found Cedric Ricks guilty of capital murder and in May 2014 returned a death punishment verdict.

Ricks repeatedly stabbed Roxann Sanchez, with whom he was arguing, and Anthony Figueroa.

Ricks has exhausted his available legal remedies in state and federal courts, and there are no stays in effect in the case. The Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office sought an order setting the execution date and a death warrant from Judge Ryan Hill, who currently presides in the 371st District Court.

The state will use an injection of pentobarbital to execute Ricks in the death chamber at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Huntsville Unit. He is 51.

Two other children were in the apartment when the killings occurred on May 1, 2013. An 8-month-old boy, Isaiah, was not injured. He is Ricks and Sanchez’s son.

Also there was the 30-year-old woman’s eldest son, 12-year-old Marcus Figueroa. The boy was himself stabbed and watched his mother and brother die.

“He held my head down with one hand and stabbed me with the other hand,” Marcus Figueroa testified at Ricks’ trial. “He stabbed me a bunch of times. He didn’t say anything. After he stabbed me, he pushed me to the ground.”

Marcus Figueroa made a gurgling noise, a sound that had come from Anthony, to try to suggest to Ricks that he was dead and stop the stabbing. Marcus mimicked the last breaths of his younger brother.

Ricks testified in the trial’s punishment phase. He told the jury that he wanted to die.

Ricks avoided the specifics of the homicides.

“It’s irrelevant what happened that night,” Ricks testified. “The jury made a decision to convict me on the facts that were presented. Maybe if I had testified [in the guilt-innocence phase] it would have been different.”

The last defendant in a capital murder case in Tarrant County who the Texas Department of Criminal Justice executed was Steven Nelson, who was put to death in February. Nelson beat Arlington pastor Clinton Dobson and suffocated him with a plastic bag.

Defense attorneys Bill Ray and Steve Gordon were appointed to represent Nelson and Ricks. Bob Gill represented the state in the prosecution of both defendants. Robert Huseman joined Gill in the Ricks case.

Ricks has a brain that predisposes him to violent behavior, according to a neuroscience researcher called by the defense as a witness.

Jeffrey Lewine concluded from reviewing images of Ricks’ brain that one area, the putamen, is larger than that area in the brains of control subjects. Larger putamens are associated with increased aggression, Lewine testified.

The defendant’s mother recounted in testimony her son’s misbehavior in early life.

“We tried everything we could to help him,” Helen Ricks testified. “We tried whipping him, we went to counselors, we did what we could. We never thought we would be in a position like this, where he would be tried for [capital] murder.”