EDINBURG -- After being sentenced to death Friday, a handcuffed Jose Noe Martinez appeared to threaten sobbing relatives who lost two family members at his hands.
"It's not over," the 19-year-old muttered to relatives of his victims as he was escorted out of the courtroom by Hidalgo County sheriff's deputies. In response, friends and members of the victims' family uttered a collective and almost defiant "oh."
Martinez's next response to the family -- an expletive -- prompted one Palomo family member to lunge at Martinez. A court bailiff, family members and sheriff's deputies held Martinez back as some people in the crowded courtroom suddenly froze.
Jurors convicted Martinez in the February 1995 fatal stabbings of 68-year-old Esperanza Palomo and her 4-year-old partially blind granddaughter, Amanda.
Martinez broke into her Madero home and stabbed Palomo, a longtime Levi Strauss & Co. employee, and the child, over and over again.
Amanda, who lived in Sinton with her parents, was visiting her grandmother the night of the stabbings.
Oscar Palomo, Amanda's father and Esperanza's son, clutched a rosary as the jurors filed into the 370th state District Court to announce their decision. Clutching pieces of tissue, his wife gasped and began to weep when the sentence was presented.
It took jurors less than an hour to answer two key issues -- does Martinez pose a danger to society in the future and were there any reasons he deserved less than a death sentence.
"Juries do what juries do based on the evidence whether it's right or wrong," said Martinez's court-appointed defense attorney, Ricardo Flores."Nobody likes to try capital murder cases, but the system has to be tested."
Because the jurors unanimously agreed to the death penalty, state law requires370th state District Court Judge Noe Gonzalez to impose the death sentence on Martinez.
The same jury that convicted Martinez determined that his case merits death by lethal injection. Martinez stood stone-faced before Gonzalez as the death penalty was ordered.
"Was it worth it?" asked Hidalgo County Assistant District Attorney Letitia Lopez, in response to the decision to seek the death penalty. "Ask the Palomo family. They lost a child and a mother. Was it worth it? Yes, it was."
Martinez, a Houston native, had been staying with family members next door to the Palomo residence the night of the killings.
Jurors saw graphic photos of the victims' bodies as well as the clothes the victims wore the night of the slayings.
They also heard testimony from a Secret Service agent that Martinez hatched a plot to kill President Clinton and Vice President Gore from his prison cell.
"As a prosecutor, it's never easy to seek the death penalty," Lopez said."There are cases where there is no other choice but to seek the death penalty."
Martinez joins four other Hidalgo County inmates in Huntsville on death row. The last Hidalgo County inmate sent to death row was Robert Ramos, who was found guilty of bludgeoning his 42-year-old wife and their three children to death in 1993.
Because Martinez's case involves the death penalty, his trial will be automatically appealed. After the case makes it way through the appeals process an execution date will be set if all of Martinez's appeals are denied.
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