{"id":60393,"date":"2018-08-22T17:00:57","date_gmt":"2018-08-22T23:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/jury-convicts-husband-of-strangling-his-wife\/"},"modified":"2018-08-22T23:00:57","modified_gmt":"2018-08-22T23:00:57","slug":"jury-convicts-husband-of-strangling-his-wife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/jury-convicts-husband-of-strangling-his-wife\/","title":{"rendered":"Jury convicts husband of strangling his wife"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image naviga-align-left alignleft\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=685c4a9b-b27d-4996-87c8-d98f9d2f88bd&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"1000\" height=\"1333\" alt=\"Martinez- Perez\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Martinez- Perez<\/span><span class=\"credit\">du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>A Durango man suspected of strangling his wife last year in the Lightner Creek Mobile Home Park was found guilty Wednesday of first-degree murder.<\/p>\n<p>Silvino Martinez-Perez, 36, showed no obvious reaction as a jury foreman announced the verdicts.<\/p>\n<p>First-degree murder carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison. He was also found guilty of abusing a corpse and three counts of child abuse.<\/p>\n<p>Martinez-Perez strangled his wife, Crystal Martinez-Perez, 33, after a lengthy argument in which she told him she wanted a divorce and that her body wasn\u2019t his anymore.<\/p>\n<p>Martinez-Perez admitted to strangling his wife in a recorded 911 call, which was played for jurors.<\/p>\n<p>Defense lawyers said Martinez-Perez acted in the \u201cheat of passion\u201d and his actions weren\u2019t premeditated and, therefore, didn\u2019t amount to first-degree murder.<\/p>\n<p>But prosecutors said Martinez-Perez told investigators he strangled Crystal for about two minutes, until she lost consciousness. He then strangled her again for about 50 seconds. That was long enough for him to form intent, said Deputy District Attorney Robert Barlow.<\/p>\n<p>Jurors seemed to agree. They could have convicted him of lesser counts, including second-degree murder, manslaughter or criminal negligence resulting in homicide.<\/p>\n<p>District Attorney Christian Champagne said he\u2019s glad his office could help bring some closure and a sense of justice to the family.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese cases are a tragedy,\u201d he said. \u201cThese families are devastated, these victims\u2019 lives will never be the same.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A formal sentencing hearing is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Nov. 1.<\/p>\n<p><em class=\"mwc_shirttail\"><a href=\"mailto:shane@durangoherald.com\">shane@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Silvino Martinez-Perez, 36, faces life in prison for first-degree murder<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":60394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[133,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-60393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-courts","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60393"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=60393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}