A Florida man who killed his wife and posted a photo of her bloody corpse on Facebook was convicted Wednesday of second-degree murder after failing to convince a jury that he shot her eight times in self-defense. The jury’s verdict came in the third week of the trial of Derek Medina in the August 2013 killing of 27-year-old Jennifer Alfonso. Prosecutors said they will seek life in prison for Medina. Police say Alfonso’s body was found in a position indicating she was cowering in fear.
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Derek Medina, is led out of the courtroom after he was found guilty of second-degree murder, Wednesday November 25, 2015 in Miami. “He was angry and he wanted her dead”.
Medina, who appeared as an extra on USA’s drama “Burn Notice”, went upstairs, where Alfonso’s 10-year-old daughter was sleeping, and grabbed his gun to shoot his wife.
Prosecutors, however, presented evidence that it was Medina who had a history of abusing his wife.
At trial, Medina’s team of lawyers tried to portray him as a “psychologically and emotionally abused” husband whose wife ultimately attacked him with a knife before he fatally shot her. The defense claimed that the internal surveillance video, which did not capture the shooting itself but depicts snippets of the altercation, shows “the butt of a knife”.
Two years ago, Derek Medina posted on Facebook a chilling photo of his wife’s slumping, lifeless body with the caption “I’m going to prison or death sentence for killing my wife”. Trial testimony showed the couple began fighting in their upstairs bedroom because Medina had failed to wake up his wife early that morning to watch a movie, as he had promised.
The couple’s young daughter was still in the house, police have said. The girl did not witness her mother’s death. “I don’t know if they would have been swayed if they would have heard about her drug use”.
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After he killed his wife, authorities say, Medina drove to see his family and then turned himself in to police. “It’s hard to tell the entire world you’re going to prison and then walk back out”.
