The 23-year-old El Salvador native was charged with two counts of capital murder and one count of complicity to murder in the fatal shooting in Cincinnati.
He was also charged with intimidation and participating in a gang in connection with the Fairfield crimes and two charges of felonious assault in connection with the Cincinnati shooting.
The penalty phase, when Alvarenga-Retana will have a chance to plead for leniency, starts on Tuesday. His attorney Greg Howard said 10 family members and family friends will speak on his behalf and Alvarenga-Retana won’t likely take the stand until Wednesday afternoon.
The jury may sentence him to a period of years in prison, life without parole or death. His accomplice in the Fairfield shootings had a possible death sentence hanging over his head, but was sentenced to 78 years in prison.
Jurors heard three days of testimony last week, including that of two eyewitnesses. One young woman, a pregnant mother of seven, testified she was in the backseat of the car when Alvarenga-Retana gunned down Evelin Osveli Morales and Marlon Enamorado-Gomez in the restaurant parking lot. They died from their gunshot wounds on July 13, 2008. He threatened the woman after the shooting.
“He pushed me back and told me if I said anything, he will hurt me where it hurts the most, which is my children,” she said. “And my husband was already a dead man.”
Contact this reporter at (513) 696-4525 or dcallahan@coxohio.com.
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