Thomas Steven Sanders, a man whose death sentence was commuted by former Democratic President Joe Biden in December 2024, has been formally charged with first-degree murder for the homicide of 12-year-old Lexis Roberts, according to Catahoula Parish District Attorney Bradley R. Burget.
The indictment was issued on April 16, 2025, by a grand jury in that jurisdiction, and the prosecution announced it will seek the death penalty again, this time at the state level, noting that Biden's federal commutation will not affect this new process.
Sanders was originally sentenced to death in September 2014 for the kidnapping and murder of Lexis that occurred in 2010. After a trial that lasted four years, a jury in the federal court in Alexandria sentenced him to capital punishment.
The case caused national shock, especially after Sanders confessed to killing Lexis's mother, Suellen Roberts, in Arizona, before taking the girl to Louisiana, where he brutally murdered her.
According to the information presented by Burget, Suellen and Lexis lived in Las Vegas, Nevada, and on the Labor Day weekend of 2010, both took a trip with Sanders to the Grand Canyon in Arizona.
