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Because of the 2016 supreme court ruling that minors can't be sentenced to life sentences, a man who was a teen at the time who brutally beat, cut the heart out of, and cut the head off another teen, then video taped himself talking to it while mutilating it, will be released from prison in March after having served over 27 years.
A man who murdered and decapitated a fellow teen in 1996 has been granted parole.
The Michigan Department of Corrections said the projected parole date for Federico “Kiko” Cruz is March 25.
Cruz was 16 in April 1996 when he murdered 17-year-old David Crawford near Sparta, cut off the victim’s head and recorded himself talking to and mutilating it. The video was so disturbing it wasn’t shown to the jury that convicted him.
Cruz was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, but a 2016 U.S. Supreme Court ruling meant he was entitled to resentencing because he was a minor when the crime was committed.
Cruz ended up getting another life sentence without parole when he was resentenced but the Michigan Supreme Court ruled he needed to be resentenced again because his rights were violated.
He was initially resentenced to life in 2018 but was then granted another resentencing because an appeals court found his rights were violated.
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More than two decades after he murdered a fellow teen and desecrated his body, Federico “Kiko” Cruz is getting another shot at possibly a different prison sentence.
On Wednesday, an appeals court ruled Cruz, who was resentenced in November, should be resentenced again. Erin Van Campen with the Michigan Appellate Defender Office says the court determined the original (resentencing) judge who heard the case, Kent County Circuit Court Judge Dennis Leiber, improperly denied the defense’s request to pay for expert consultations.
Campen said the appeals court judge determined expert opinions played a crucial role in determining Cruz should be sentenced to life in prison without parole, and blocking funding for experts violated Cruz’s due process rights.
The video produced by Federico Cruz was so disturbing it wasn't shown to jurors, and upon having viewed his own video Cruz only regret was the choice he made of the background music.
The video was so disturbing it wasn’t shown to the jury that convicted him of murder. Leiber said that upon watching it, Cruz once said the only thing he regretted was his choice of background music.
Liebers, prosecutor on the case when Cruz was resentenced to another life sentence, Cruz stated to Liebers upon his resentencing that he was molested as a child and was led down the road path by others, got into drugs and thought he could communicate with demons. He felt he was rehabilitated and working toward a ministry degree through a college but Liebers told him none of that negated the fact that he was a sociopath and sentenced him again to life in prison.
Cruz told Leiber, who presided over his initial trial, that he had been molested by a cousin as a child, a trauma that set him down the wrong path and led him to fall in with a bad crowd and start doing drugs. He said at the time, he believed he could communicate with demons.
Now 39 and having spent more than half his life in prison, he said he has been rehabilitated.
But in handing down his decision, Leiber said Cruz’s progress, including working toward a degree in ministry from Calvin College, does not mitigate that he is a sociopath.
Initially looking back over the case being assigned as the resentencing judge, he pointed out the brutality of the crime at the time in court that day.
In court Wednesday, Kent County Circuit Court Judge Dennis Leiber described the gruesome 1996 murder of 17-year-old David Crawford in the Sparta area. The 16-year-old Cruz beat Crawford to death, dissected his heart and spine, then cut his head off and recorded himself mutilating it.
“At one point, it was alleged that by doing this, he claimed it gave him supernatural powers,” Lieber said in court.
The video was so disturbing it wasn’t shown to the jury that convicted him of murder. Leiber said that upon rewatching it, Cruz once said the only thing he regretted was his choice of background music.
The prosecutor who sentenced him to life the first time said the supreme court decision doesn't take into account the severity of the crimes, and that if crimes such as this doesn't deserve a life sentence than he doesn't know who should.
Bill Forsyth, who prosecuted the crime back in 1996, told News 8 exclusively that the decisions made by the U.S. and Michigan Supreme Courts requiring that all 18-year-old criminals and younger who faced mandatory life in prison without the possibility of parole be resentenced has forced judges to make alarming rulings despite the severity of the crime.
“I’m of the opinion that they have effectively made giving a life sentence to a juvenile next to impossible,” Forsyth said. “And if the [court’s] goal is to get rid of mandatory life sentences for juveniles then they ought to have the guts to simply rule that way.”
Federico Cruz, who brutally killed and beheaded David Crawford nearly three decades ago, received a new sentence this week ranging from 35 to 60 years behind bars. He will be credited with time already served. Depending on no further issues within the prison system, Cruz could walk free in eight years.
“I know the Supreme Court, when they passed this ruling years and years ago, said it should be rare that someone gets a life sentence under these conditions in terms of their age. Well, if Federico Cruz and Jon Siesling, for that matter, don’t deserve a life sentence, then I’m not sure anybody does,” Forsyth said.
Siesling was also resentenced due to the high court ruling this past June. He was convicted of killing his mother and two sisters.
“You’re in theory sentencing somebody when they were 16 or 17 years old for what they did at that time,” Forsyth said. “But they’re being resentenced based on how they have behaved in prison for the last 20 or 30 years. That’s troubling, in the sense, because it’s great that they behaved themselves in a controlled environment, but why are they entitled to be resentenced based on their prison behavior, and why not everybody else then?”
He has a valid point in the argument that violent criminals, especially ones who suffer sociopathic behaviors, can be masterminds at behaving themselves in prison. If Michigan hadn't passed the lifer law I'd be packing up moving out of the state if I knew one of my brothers would get released from prison.
Kent county prosecutor who ended up sentencing Cruz a third time said these types of situations often focus on the rights of the criminals and not the victim's nor their family members.
Kent County Circuit Judge Mark Trusock said in court this week that he is required to follow the letter of the law even if it prioritizes the criminal’s rights over that of the victims’.
“I can not make the law,” Trusock said. “I’m clearly just a circuit court judge. I will note, for the record, that all of these cases focus on the murderer’s rights. There is no discussion in any of these cases that deal with the victims, the victim’s family, (the) victim’s friends, punishment or deterrent. The only focus from the appellate courts is on the defendants.” <a href = "https://www.woodtv.com/news/grand-rapids/former-prosecutor-cruz-resentencing-grave-mistake/?ipid=promo-link-block1"
As a family related victim myself, I know exactly how that feels. To this day I still get tears in my eyes telling the story. Similar to Cruz there's usually some sort of childhood trauma involved in how a person develops into the person they become, but part of that development there is an aspect that good behavior will excuse the bad. Repeated cycling pattern of misbehaving, punishment, and good behavior to get out of it can become instilled in a young mind. That's what I think happened in my brothers case. Of all my mom's kids, he was hyperactive and as such, he took the brunt of my mom's brutality when she'd get upset after getting drunk. Which was another action that he, basically was inbreed to, that brutality enforces compliance.
The first time he went to prison it was because he shot his off again, on again girlfriend he had a child with, new boyfriend in the leg. They went light on him and gave him two years for the gun law. Before he got out though, his old girlfriend took her kids and moved out of town, out of the reach of the control he tried to impress upon her. The second time he went to prison was over the same type of situation, trying to control his new girlfriend by going over, trying to gain entry with a gun in his hand. The gun he got from going over friends who had a gun, tying them up and taking it. Lucky for his new girlfriend when he got there, she had a friend over who struggled in the doorway over control of the gun while he was firing it and somehow the friend managed to over come the situation and he fled. It took a week for the police to find him but he ended up this time getting up to twenty years in prison. Of which it took him seventeen years to finally succeed at parole.
Unbeknownst to me he had been communicating with my sister because part of the parole required him having somewhere to go. She lived the majority of her life in foster care as having been the youngest found sleeping in a chair when child protective services, with the police, raided our house and took us. Not having to go into details of why she never came back home until her later teen years unlike the rest of us earlier on, to save time, quite frankly she was rather naïve about how my brother really was. At that point in his life, he even went back home before any of the other kids because no foster family could handle him after having gone through several of them. Whereas being the second one to come home, I spent more time with him in my life than any of the rest of the kids had. On top of the mistake of having let him come live with me once after he got out of jail in my early adulthood, I knew who he really had become. If I had known what my sister was up to I could have tried hard to convince her not to take him but she probably wouldn't have listened anyway. Well, I know she wouldn't have because after she did, she just brushed it off when I tried to warn her. Nope, she didn't take me seriously until she found herself buying a gun, installing alarms and putting up camera's.
I'll never forget that day he showed up at my house after getting out of prison, I never even knew he got out. That partly is to do with the manipulation technique I was speaking about. He knew to keep it on the low down with my sister because he knew I'd tell her the things he did when he lived with me. Now, there he was with that great big Cheshire grin on his face staring me right in the face. Just from that stare, every instinct and inclination I had in my body, I knew what I had to do. I would not only have to devise a plan to keep her family safe but my own family safe to. When things started going south over there I told him he could stay in the basement at my shop for free to get him away from her and her kids and keep him away from being right upon myself and the kids, though he was only four blocks away. I immediately went to work figuring out a plan to keep my kids safe if he went on a nut. I knew he held some hostilities over the successes my sister and I ascertained over the years looking around the house making comments on how we'd done, like even, having all the things kids would even need over being able to send him more money while he was in prison. Like we owed him more than those types of considerations of extra's over his comfort in prison. I think he was the one who poked holes in the ring to the ring top pool in the backyard and one night the plug having come undone, sneaking around being underhanded. I am not saying he would have harmed us but there was a greater potential than not because the next time he'd go back, he wasn't coming back out, and if we weren't going to be to the greater good to him, why should we enjoy our lives.
It was ninety one degrees outside, my kids were downstairs with their friends playing video games. I was upstairs in the attic putting an attic door on. I came downstairs to get something, and this is where I always get tears telling this part, when one of their friends asked me what I was banging on. One of my kids said that I thought my brother was going to do us harm. The way he said it was like he wasn't taking me serious. I looked them all in the eye while pointing my finger and I told them you listen to me and you take me very, very seriously, if you are all sitting here and I tell you to run, you run, you run up those steps, get in that attic, shut that door, throw everything on top of it, go to the window and start yelling for help, if I am not behind you, don't stop, don't look back, run, run, do you got me, you run.
What made it even harder was that my sister, let me tell yeah, she was way worse than I ever could be speaking her mind despite it not being out of your own best interest to do so. One day the sheriff shows up, which I knew had to be something between my brother and sister since I lived in the city and it wasn't a city cop. The sheriff comes into the shop, I am standing there cutting someone's hair, I knew he was in the basement and likely to hear whatever the sheriff had to say. The sheriff asked if my brother was around as my sister had said... The look of sheer terror my face must have had and the inability to keep my legs from shaking combined with me shaking my head no, he stopped himself. God knows what my sister would have said was all I could think about. He asked if I could get my brother, I did and they went outside. My brother came back in and said my sister suspected him of having gone over there and mowed down her mailbox because he accused of her of not giving him his mail. I am sure at this point, rifle at hand, alarms installed and camera's all over her house, she'd ask me to get any mail just to keep him from going anywhere near there, and from all indication of that look on his face, he was guilty as sin looking as if he'd gotten away with it as the sheriff played it down.
During the time he stayed there he got involved with another girl. As the months proceeded she became increasingly aware of his controlling behaviors. She had been a prostitute drug addict for a long time, so that didn't help matters as I suspected due to his increasing erratic behavior, he was doing drugs himself. I knew this wouldn't end well and there were times I was conflicted between keeping my own self and kids safe and saving her life by warning her. When it really started getting bad, I did try but she always ended up coming back after a fight. When I was so sure he'd end up killing her, I called her on the phone and told her she needed to leave town, go anywhere to get away from him while begging her at the same time not to tell her what I was warning her about. I called his parole officer and asked him to do something. He said there isn't anything he could do, there were rules in place he had to follow. I told him straight out, if he does something to one of my kids or I and I survive it, I am coming down there and I am going to do the exact same thing to you. He told me not to call there threatening him. He finally did ask him to come in for a drug drop, and it came back he was doing drugs. He violated his parole and sent him into rehab in another city. When he got out, it was right back to the same old thing. This time when he violated him, he told him he could no longer stay where he was at and he was putting him in a half way house here. Which wasn't secure except the doors and he'd sneak out the windows at night and show up out of the blue outside my house. I'd go outside to talk with him in an attempt to keep him away from my kids in the house.
Than one night, the knock came as expected. It was the city police, they asked if my brother was there. I said no, why did he go on a nut. The cop said yes, he went on a nut, he stabbed his girlfriend several times and killed her brother in law that was trying to come to her rescue. He asked if they could search the house and I said yes. I told him, if he was here I'd tell you, he has nothing to lose if he tries to harm us and I am just as scared as the day I knew this was coming. It took them two weeks to catch him but I knew we were very well protected during that time.
The moral of the story is that when judges prioritize prisoner rights over the rights of their victims, victims family and friends, they don't realize the emotions of terror they reign over these people's lives. The constant fear of every sound made in the middle of the night, always looking over your shoulder to see if they are there, and in this particular case in the story, it was so hideous what that person did, that molestation as a child by a cousin doesn't even begin to explain it in an otherwise desired wish he expressed of wanting to go back to his family at his parole hearing. That's even considering he's telling the truth about a cousin who molested him, as bad as any form of sexual abuse can be, it comes no where near the type of mind it takes to cut someone's heart, spine out and behead them and your only regret is the background music you chose while continuing to mutilate them after they are dead. From his own words, in what must have been a completely otherwise normal childhood desirable enough to want to go back there, the actions that brought him to the the point of where he is, wasn't foisted upon the abuser, but the taking of an innocent life in a horrific manner that never did anything to him to any reasonable reasoning of taking his life out of punishment for what happened to him. It's because he's incapable of any logical reasoning and he did what he did because he desired to do so. His desires, to this day, still come out on top, with illogical reasoning even attached to it. His statement in court at the parole hearing:
"I am complexed by an internal conflict as these proceedings come to a close. On one hand I desire nothing more than to be reunited with my family and begin to work to reconcile with my community with positive and productive engagement. But on the other hand I feel so horrible for the Crawfords for the pain, suffering they have experienced for what I did. It's unbearable beyond imagination."
Let's just skip right past that internal conflict he's complexed by, if he's still suffering from internal conflicts that complexes his emotional desires, he's not ready to be released yet. It shows that his desires still warrant being place over others when he states his desire first over the pain and suffering he caused others. That in itself is justifiable reason to deny parole.
It's unbearable beyond imagination sounds like standard text from a psychology book in the prison library, none the less the unbridled way he states it, coupled with his desire to return to his community to work with them in a positive and productive engagement, now that, that right there, is what you'd call the understatement of the year, that he is incapable of contextualizing that to the community as being beyond any stretch of the imagination as unbearable to them, completely undermines the safety of that community into which he'll be released.
Here you have everyone involved in the case sounding all the alarm bells but justices sitting on benches far above them, untouched by the realities that some kids weren't just kids. They were completely capable of understanding their desires as a human being, as such, should be judged for it appropriately.