Home / Dallas News / Irving child-killer who had death sentence overturned agrees to life without parole

Irving child-killer who had death sentence overturned agrees to life without parole

An Irving man sent to death row in 2008 for killing his 3-year-old and 8-month-old children has been resentenced to life in prison without parole.

Hector Rolando Medina
Hector Rolando Medina(Dallas County Sheriff’s Department)

Hector Rolando Medina, 40, was granted a new punishment trial in 2017 because of ineffective counsel during his original trial.

His defense attorneys and Dallas County prosecutors filed documents with a Dallas County court Friday saying they had agreed that Medina should spend the rest of his life behind bars.

The district attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment. A defense attorney also did not respond; the settlement says that Medina and his lawyers have agreed to never again speak publicly about his life, his crimes or the case.

Medina fatally shot 3-year-old Javier and 8-month-old Diana on March 4, 2007, in their home in the 3100 block of Roanoke Drive, then walked outside and shot himself in the neck.

His girlfriend, Elia Martinez-Bermudez, had filed for a protective order against him just two days earlier, saying she’d ended their relationship that week and that he’d previously threatened to harm her and their children.

She wrote in an affidavit that he had assaulted and raped her and said that if she tried to leave him “he would kill me and both our children and then himself.”

Hector Rolando Medina was convicted of capital murder for killing 8-month-old Diana and 3-year-old Javier.
Hector Rolando Medina was convicted of capital murder for killing 8-month-old Diana and 3-year-old Javier. (File photo )

At Medina’s capital murder trial the following year, his lawyer, Donna Winfield, admitted that he’d killed the children. But she argued that his state of mind had been affected by the discovery that Martinez-Bermudez was having an affair with one of the couple’s housemates.

The jury took six minutes to convict Medina.

The trial’s punishment phase was delayed six weeks because a juror broke her arm, and when it resumed, Winfield said that the defense’s expert witnesses were not available. The judge told her to proceed, then jailed Winfield for about two and a half hours for contempt of court when she refused.

Winfield did not call any witnesses or give a closing argument during the punishment phase, and Medina was sentenced to death.

Hector Rolando Medina consults with defense attorney Donna Winfield in September 2008.

The sentence was appealed, and in October 2017 the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the highest criminal court in the state, determined that Winfield’s “deficient performance” during the punishment phase deprived Medina of a fair trial. The Court of Criminal Appeals sent the case back to a Dallas County court for a new sentencing trial.

In a concurring opinion, Judge Michael Keasler called Winfield’s behavior during the trial “truly reprehensible,” saying that she “intentionally torpedoed” the proceedings.

“Perhaps even more disgraceful, at no point did she inform Medina of her scheme,” he wrote. “Instead, counsel contented herself to say only two words to her client: ‘Trust me.’”

Keasler also noted that a second punishment trial would require reassembling all the evidence and witnesses and, sadly, asking the mother of two slain children “to relive her worst nightmare before a jury of twelve strangers.”

In this month’s sentencing agreement, Medina affirmed that “he will never challenge in any way … any sentence, judgment, or other order arising from his sentencing” in exchange for a life sentence without parole. He may not appeal, seek a review of the case or ask for clemency.

If Medina does any of those things, the state can declare the agreement void and seek to have him executed.

The agreement says it is meant “to never permit and always exclude the possibility of Defendant’s release from confinement during the remainder of his life.”

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