Rashad Raleigh, known to his few friends as “Shoddy,” could be as cold as they come.

One partner in crime said Raleigh had shown no emotion or remorse when he spoke of the execution-style killings of a St. Paul man and his fiancee. But when he spoke of killing the woman’s teenage daughter, he lamented, “God’s gonna punish me for it.”

Divine justice may wait but the U.S. government doesn’t. Today Raleigh, 33, and co-defendant Tyvarus “Big Stick” Lindsey, 29, will be sentenced in federal court in Minneapolis for the 2007 triple slayings of Otahl “Telly” Saunders, 31, Maria McLay, 32, and Brittany Kekedakis, 15.

A jury found Raleigh and Lindsey guilty of murder in June. The convictions carry mandatory life sentences, and the only question for U.S. District Judge Joan Ericksen is whether to run the sentences concurrently or stack them one after another – and whether the sentences should run concurrently with murder sentences the men already are serving in state prison for separate killings.

Jon Hopeman, the lawyer who defended Lindsey, argued in a presentencing memo that Lindsey maintains his innocence and deserved a lesser sentence “so he may have a chance of someday being released.”

“No one is irredeemable,” Hopeman wrote.

Raleigh’s attorney, Andrew Birrell, asked the judge for a sentence of life plus 10 years, to run concurrently with the life-without-release sentence his client is serving in state prison. He said such a sentence “provides just punishment for the offenses.”

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Paulsen, who prosecuted the men, countered in his own sentencing memo that concurrent sentences don’t satisfy the call of justice.

“The defendants slaughtered three different human beings,” he wrote. “Each victim deserves to have the defendant be punished for the crime committed against him or her.”

Each man will be sentenced on three counts of murder and a single count of using a gun during a drug crime. The latter charge made the killings federal crimes.

The triple slayings on the morning of March 23, 2007, shocked the quiet North End neighborhood where the victims lived. McLay, a workers’ compensation claims analyst for Travelers, owned the home in the 200 block of Burgess Avenue and lived there with her three children – Kekedakis, Daneisha Thomas, then 10, and a son who was then 7.

The other resident was Saunders, who was engaged to McLay. He was an unemployed barber and popular with neighbors, but he had another side: He was a small-time drug dealer.

Minutes before sunrise, four masked men broke through the home’s back door and ran upstairs. They corralled everyone into Daneisha’s bedroom; then two of them dragged Saunders into the couple’s bedroom.

The girl told jurors she could hear them torturing Saunders and demanding to know where his drugs were, but he insisted he had none.

The men searched the couple’s Lincoln Navigator parked out back. In it, they found 4.5 ounces of crack cocaine.

The intruders wore masks and gloves to conceal their faces and fingerprints, but during the chaos, one man uttered Raleigh’s nickname, “Shoddy.” They feared the adults could identify them, so Saunders, McLay and Kekedakis were each killed with a single shot to the head from a .357 Magnum pistol, according to testimony.

They left Daneisha and her brother unharmed.

The men left no physical evidence at the scene, but Paulsen called several witnesses who testified the killers talked freely about the crime with their underworld associates. Eventually, St. Paul police identified the four as Raleigh, Lindsey, Albert “Bozo” Hill and Phillip “Filthy Phil” Howell.

Raleigh had a history of crime. Between 1997 and the date of the Burgess Avenue slayings, he’d been booked into jail more than 30 times and had six assault convictions, three of them felonies.

Birrell wrote in his sentencing memo that during his childhood, Raleigh “endured physical abuse, including being locked in a basement and beaten with an extension cord.” He said Raleigh had a history of depression and had attempted suicide.

Similarly, Lindsey had a long history of crime. By age 25 he’d been arrested more than 20 times and had convictions for theft and drugs; one veteran St. Paul police detective said Lindsey felt the need “to be the biggest, baddest gangster.”

He also had a reputation for “hitting licks,” slang for a robbery. According to trial testimony, his favored targets were drug dealers who had cash and dope and little incentive to report their loss to the cops.

The other two men, Hill and Howell, proved investigative dead ends. Hill died in a bar shooting eight months after the slayings. Paulsen said that Howell disappeared and that the government couldn’t find him.

(Jurors would later find that Hill had killed Saunders, while it was Raleigh who killed McLay and Kekedakis.)

When federal officials indicted Raleigh and Lindsey in January 2010 for the St. Paul killings, both already were in state prison, each serving time for separate murders.

Raleigh was serving life without chance of release for the 2007 slaying of Howard Porter, a Ramsey County probation officer.

Lindsey was serving 35 years and nine months for the 2005 killing of Leon Brooks, a man he robbed during a failed carjacking.