DENVER (AP) - An inmate who played a role in the beating death of the former leader of the Mexican Mafia, a Hispanic prison gang, at Colorado's federal supermax prison has been sentenced to life.
The Pueblo Chieftain reports 56-year-old Richard Santiago was sentenced in Denver on Thursday for kicking, stomping and beating Manuel "Tati" Torrez in April 2005 at the Administrative Maximum U.S. Penitentiary in Florence. In exchange for a guilty plea, prosecutors dropped their intention to seek the death sentence.
An accomplice, Silvestre Rivera, was sentenced last year to life in prison.
The murder was the first at supermax, the nation's highest-security prison. Santiago already was serving a life sentence for killing a prisoner several years earlier at another facility.
