Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS : COURTS : ‘Overwhelming’ Evidence Gets Killer 3 Death Verdicts
The evidence was “overwhelming,” said jurors who handed down three calls for the execution of Teofilio (Junior) Medina, a 43-year-old parolee who gunned down three convenience store clerks in Orange County in 1984.
Medina, who was also accused of a fourth murder in Corona, committed the first of the robbery-murders just three months after being paroled from prison in Arizona.
He had served seven years of a rape sentence and had previously been imprisoned in California for a bar shooting incident.
Jurors took less than 12 hours to decide that Medina should die for his crimes.
“The information about the crimes he had committed just kept coming and coming,” said juror Charles Conklin. “The evidence was so overwhelming that we really did not have any choice.”
The sentence came in spite of testimony from the killer’s two sisters, who said they would work to help get their brother re-established in society, and doctors’ testimony about his mental impairment at the time of the shootings.
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