Patrick Martin punches people — often randomly and without provocation. The 40-year-old man was in and out of jail for various assault charges…
Patrick Martin punches people — often randomly and without provocation.
The 40-year-old man has been in and out of jail for various assault charges for hitting people. While in jail in December 2016, he turned his fists on his sleeping cellmate, killing the man.
Martin was sentenced Thursday to 99 years in prison for murdering 56-year-old Javier Leal.
While in jail for several assaults on Dallas Area Rapid Transit trains, Martin randomly clocked another inmate in a recreation area Dec. 29,2016.
To keep an eye on him, jailers moved him to an observation cell in the mental health tier, where Leal was sleeping.
Within 10 minutes, Martin had punched the sleeping man. After Leal stumbled out of his bottom bunk, Martin used his elbows to repeatedly wallop the man.
Leal hit his head on the metal toilet and fell to the floor. Martin then started stomping the man.
Some inmates testified that they were buzzing for guards to come to the cell where they could hear Leal’s cries for help. Martin called jailers himself after Leal was unconscious.
When they arrived, Leal was lying on the bloodied floor and Martin ran from his cell saying his cellmate was trying to rape him, according to court testimony.
He later claimed that the beating was in self-defense after he felt heat on his body and thought Leal was coming up behind him. But he contradicted himself when he told investigators that he punched Leal while the man was sleeping.
Defense attorney Kenneth Weatherspoon asked jurors to consider Martin’s mental illness before they sentenced him. A mental health expert testified that Martin is schizophrenic.
“I’m not asking you to excuse it,” Weatherspoon argued. “I’m asking you to understand it.”
Prosecutor George Lewis called Martin a “bully.”
Though the man has hallucinations, Lewis said, it doesn’t excuse his long history of hurting people.
Martin used a knife to assault a woman on a DART train in 2011. He was sentenced to four years in prison, and, during his incarceration, he racked up 20 violations for his behavior.
After he was released, Martin had brief stints in the county jail for attacking people on DART trains or at the train stations.
Weatherspoon questioned why jailers thought it was a good idea to put the two men in a cell together, because Leal also had a history of mental illness.
Leal was awaiting trial on an assault case when he was killed.
In February 2016, he was found incompetent for trial and had to undergo mental health treatment before he was returned to the county jail.
Lewis argued that Martin is the only person responsible for Leal’s death. And he asked jurors to consider how helpless the man felt while Martin stomped and beat him.
“Imagine the fear that Mr. Leal must’ve felt as he was being beaten,” he argued.
