MISSOURI – Two federal inmates were sentenced to death Monday for murdering another inmate at the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, officials announced.
Wesley Paul Coonce Jr., 34, and Charles Michael Hall, 43, who are both inmates at the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners, were each found guilty on May 7, 2014, of one count of murder in the first degree.
Coonce was also found guilty of one count of murder by an inmate serving a life sentence.
The trial began on April 28, 2014.
The evidence at trial showed that another inmate at the prison medical center, Victor Castro-Rodriguez, 51, was found dead on the floor of his cell on Jan. 26, 2010. He had been murdered by Coonce and Hall, officials said.
“Achieving justice sometimes requires us to ask our citizens to make the most difficult sentencing decisions,” said U.S. Attorney Tammy Dickinson. “Mr. Castro was targeted for murder, in part, because he intervened to help a Bureau of Prisons employee as he was being attacked by another inmate.”
At the time of the murder, Coonce was serving a life sentence for a kidnapping and carjacking that involved the brutal rape of a young woman.
Hall was serving 16 years and two month for making threatening communications against a federal judge and a federal prosecutor in Maine, officials said.
“Two federal inmates senselessly killed another inmate, and today, they have been brought to justice,” said Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell.