A Texas man who confessed to killing a mother and her 8-year-old son is set to die next week — and a last-minute appeal to the Supreme Court may be his final lifeline.
Cedric Allen Ricks, 51, is scheduled for execution on March 11, 2026, for the capital murders of Roxann Sanchez and her young son, Anthony Figueroa, both killed on May 1, 2013, in Bedford, Texas. It would be the state’s second execution of the year — and one of the more clear-cut cases to reach the death chamber in recent memory, given that Ricks admitted to the killings himself.
A Confession, a Jury, and a Clock Running Out
At his 2013 trial, Ricks didn’t exactly leave the jury guessing. He admitted to killing Sanchez and her son, acknowledged that he had a history of aggression and trouble controlling his anger, and told the court he was “sorry about everything.” That kind of courtroom candor is rare. It also didn’t help him much.
The jury in Tarrant County took less than an hour to convict. Deciding on the death sentence took a bit longer — about seven hours — but the outcome was the same. Ricks was formally received onto Texas death row on May 19, 2014, at age 39, assigned TDCJ Number 999593. He’s been there ever since.
That’s twelve years. Twelve years of appeals, delays, and the particular, grinding limbo of death row — for a man who, by his own account, did exactly what the state says he did.
A Last Appeal Before the Highest Court
Still, the legal machinery keeps turning. On March 6, 2026 — just five days before the scheduled execution — an application for a stay of execution was submitted to Justice Samuel Alito, docketed as Case 25A983. The specifics of the appeal haven’t been widely detailed in public filings, but the timing alone signals urgency. This is the kind of move defense attorneys make when options are nearly exhausted.
Whether Alito or the full Court acts on it before Wednesday remains to be seen. The Supreme Court has granted last-minute stays before — and refused them just as readily.
The Victims, and What Was Lost
It’s easy, in the procedural churn of capital litigation, to lose sight of what actually happened. Roxann Sanchez is dead. Her son Anthony — eight years old — is dead too. Whatever drove Ricks to that house on May 1, 2013, two people who had no part in his anger didn’t walk away from it. The child was in third grade, roughly. That detail doesn’t appear in court documents, but it doesn’t need to.
Advocacy groups have pushed for clemency, as they do in virtually every Texas execution. The arguments tend to center on the death penalty itself rather than Ricks’s innocence — because innocence isn’t the claim here. It never was.
What Comes Next
Barring intervention from the Supreme Court or an unlikely last-minute reprieve from the governor, Cedric Allen Ricks will be executed at the Huntsville Unit on the evening of March 11, 2026. He’ll have spent nearly 12 years on death row — longer than Anthony Figueroa ever lived.
He said he was sorry about everything. Whether that means anything, at this point, is a question the state of Texas has already answered.
