A judge sentenced Marvin Palencia to 30 years in prison Friday for the 2010 shooting death of Jacobo Vazquez. Palencia will also serve an additional 16 months for one count of tampering with evidence.
“It was out of character for Mr. Palencia,” Judge John Ramsey Johnson said. “In many ways he’s a good man who did a terrible act.”
On November 16, 2010 Vazquez’s body was found in a cardboard box wrapped with duct tape on the side of westbound I-70 in Maryland. He had been missing for five days. An autopsy found that Vazquez suffered gunshot wounds to the torso, and one to the back of the head. One week later Palencia was arrested and held on suspicion of first-degree murder while armed in Vazquez’s death.
Palencia was found guilty in June of first-degree murder while armed, tampering with physical evidence and related weapons offenses in connection with the shooting death of Vazquez.
During the trial, prosecutors claimed that Palencia planned the murder after learning about an affair between his wife and Vazquez. But Palencia’s defense attorneys argued that Palencia only wanted to scare Vazquez on the night of Nov. 11, 2010, but shot Vazquez in a storage room at their workplace when Vazquez drew a knife.
At trial, Palencia testified that after he learned of Vazquez’s affair with his wife he bought a gun with intentions to “use it on myself.” Palencia told jurors that the day of the murder he shot and killed Vazquez in self-defense, then wrapped his dead body up in plastic wrap and placed it in a cardboard box that he left on the side of a Maryland highway.
“There is nothing I can do to remedy what has occurred,” Palencia said Friday. “I can only look for God’s forgiveness and may God’s will be done.”
