CANYON COUNTY, Idaho — Canyon County prosecutors announced that Erasmo Alcala Diaz, 59, was handed a 30-year sentence for 2nd Degree murder for the 2015 death of Amparo Godinez Sanchez.
Diaz pled guilty to the charge in January of this year. The judge sentenced him to 15 years of fixed prison time, followed by 15 years indeterminate, meaning he may be eligible for parole in 2038.
In addition to submitting a DNA sample and thumbprint into the Idaho database, the Judge ordered that Diaz have no contact with the victim's family.
Diaz's charge is from an incident when he shot and killed 39-year-old Sanchez, his partner, inside their home in Wilder in front of their children.
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At the time, Diaz fled the scene and country, only being apprehended six years later in Mexico by Mexican Federales with the assistance of the US Marshals Service. Diaz was extradited to the US in November 2021.
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“I certainly wish the sentence handed down today better reflected the depravity of the crime that was committed. However, I can take some solace in knowing that if Mr. Diaz is ever paroled, he will be extradited back to Mexico to spend the remainder of his life there,” said Chief Deputy Prosecutor Douglas Robertson.
In an interview from 2016, East Idaho News reported that the victim's children, Laura and Judy Diaz, have become advocates for survivors of domestic abuse.
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Erasmo Diaz has previous convictions related to domestic violence. In 2008, he pleaded three felony charges down to misdemeanors after he assaulted Godinez and threatened to shoot members of the family. He served a 90-day jail sentence and completed a year of probation before he successfully petitioned a court to regain control of his three handguns.
