Two Illinois convicts among 37 whose death sentences were commuted by President Joe Biden

A Chicago podiatrist who fatally shot a patient who was cooperating in a federal fraud probe of his Medicare billings was among 37 people who had their federal death sentences commuted by President Joe Biden.

In January of 2002, Ronald Mikos, 76, called Joyce Brannon days before she was scheduled testify before a federal grand jury and tried to convince her to reconsider, according to Tribune archives. Three days later, federal prosecutors said, Brannon, a handicapped church caretaker, was shot in the head and back at close range in a North Side church where she lived and worked.

With about a month left in office, Biden made the announcement on Monday to convert dozens of death sentences to a term of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Also among them is a former Lake County man who received a federal death sentence for the murder of a Navy petty officer in Virginia.

Authorities had been investigating Mikos for fraud. They alleged in a 25-count indictment that he defrauded Medicare of more than $1.25 million by falsely claiming to have performed thousands of surgeries and that he obstructed justice by recruiting patients to lie to investigators about the fraud. In Brannon’s case, authorities said, Mikos fraudulently billed Medicare for 85 nonexistent surgeries on her feet.

Brannon, 54, worked at Bethany Lutheran Church in the Edgewater neighborhood and used canes or a wheelchair to get around because of severe asthma.

Three days before her slaying on Jan. 27, 2002, Brannon told a sister and a friend that Mikos called her that day to try to talk her out of testifying. She said she believed she had to do the right thing, according to Tribune stories.

In 2005, a federal jury imposed the death penalty after defense attorneys unsuccessfully tried to spare his life by arguing that his judgment was affected by mental illness and abuse of alcohol and prescription drugs and that he had three young children.

After deliberating throughout parts of three days during the punishment phase of the trial, some jurors told the Tribune the decision to impose the death penalty had been a difficult one.

“It wasn’t an open-and-shut case,” one juror said. “We tried to put our emotions to the side as best we could.”

Mikos is held in the federal prison in Terre Haute.

Jorge Torrez, 36, a former Marine who grew up in Zion, was convicted of murder in the slaying of Amanda J. Snell in July 2009 at a Washington-area military base. Torrez, though, was also linked by DNA to the notorious stabbing deaths of 8-year-old Laura Hobbs and 9-year-old Krystal Tobias in Zion in 2005.

Lake County prosecutors later charged Torrez with the murders and released Laura’s father, Jerry Hobbs, who spent five years in jail awaiting trial before he was cleared of the crime and released.

After he already received the death penalty in the Virginia case, Torrez in 2018 pleaded guilty to murdering the girls and was sentenced to 100 years in prison.