His three sons, Donald, Ricky, and Raymond, plotted to break him and his cellmate, Randy Greenawalt, out of prison.

John Lyons, 24, of Yuma, traveling with his wife, son, and niece on his way to visit family in Nebraska, stopped to help.

While Raymond Tison was showing John Lyons the flat tire, the other escapees emerged from the brush.

The gang returned to Arizona, and were driving the Judges' van on Chuichu Road on the Papago Indian Reservation (now the Tohono Oʼodham Nation), when they encountered a police roadblock.

(No charges were brought for the murder of the Judges, and Colorado authorities closed the cases when the surviving gang members were convicted in Arizona.

The Arizona Supreme Court rejected this argument, asserting that the dictates of Enmund had been satisfied because the intent requirement of that case could be inferred from the fact that death was a foreseeable result of participating in a dangerous felony.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, writing for the majority, concluded that the death penalty would be appropriate for a murder like the ones the Tisons had been convicted of if it could be shown that the defendant was a major participant in the underlying felony and had acted with reckless indifference to human life.

"[4] Later, the death penalties of Ricky and Raymond Tison were reduced to life sentences because they were both under 20 at the time of the crimes.