Man Who Posted Photo of His Murdered Wife to Facebook Will Claim Self-Defense
Back in 2013, Derek Medina claimed he’d killed his wife before posting a photo of her bloody body to Facebook. Today, his attorney said he’d acted in self-defense “because he lived in fear of her drug abuse, violent tendencies and even Satan worship,” according to an Associated Press report.
In the Facebook post, Medina said his wife, Jennifer Alonso, had been punching him, and that he was not “going to stand for the abuse.” Minutes after this apparent confession, Medina posted the gruesome photo, which appears to show Alfonso’s body covered in blood and collapsed on the floor of a kitchen. In a hearing today Medina’s attorney offered more details of the encounter and described a pattern of abuse:
Defense attorney Saam Zangeneh said Monday that he will seek to introduce evidence that 27-year-old Jennifer Alfonso was an avid user of synthetic drugs such as Ecstasy, that she battered her husband and that she was deeply involved in the occult and Satan worship.
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Zangeneh said Alfonso started the fight, which escalated to the point where she came after Medina with a knife. He then shot her.
“She initiated a confrontation. My client tried to calm her down,” Zangeneh said during a hearing on trial evidence before Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Yvonne Colodny.
The prosecutor has reportedly offered Medina’s success as an amateur boxer as evidence that Alfonso cannot have posed much of a threat to her much larger husband. The AP report also mentions allegations “that Medina had years earlier told a friend he would kill Alfonso if she ever tried to leave him,” which may have been her plan.
Jury selection begins Tuesday. Medina faces life in prison if convicted.
