Prosecutors had recommended a sentence from 40 years to life, while his attorney asked jurors to consider probation.
A Houston man was sentenced Wednesday to 25 years in prison for his role in the death of his prom date in 2014.
Eddie Herrera, 20, who attended Aldine's MacArthur High School, was convicted of assault for choking 17-year-old Jacqueline Gomez during sex in a hotel room after prom on May 16, 2014. She was found dead the next morning in the hotel bed.
Prosecutors had recommended a sentence from 40 years to life, while his attorney asked jurors to consider probation.
"Eddie Herrera had absolutely no motive and no reason. He did not choke her to death," defense attorney Doug O'Brien said during closings. "He could have just as easily died in that hotel room."
Herrera, then 18, told police he and his mother worked together to rent the hotel room, get two bottles of whiskey and at least 20 pills of hydrocodone, a prescription painkiller. He told detectives that he and Gomez drank a bottle and a half of whiskey and took most of the pills before having consensual sex.
It was during the sex, he told police, that she asked him to squeeze her neck. Prosecutors said it was more likely that Herrera choked Gomez until she was unconscious during rough sex. He then passed out next to her and woke to find her dead.
Herrera was not charged with murder. He was convicted of assaulting someone in a dating relationship, a first-degree felony. Herrera's defense lawyer argued that she died of an overdose.
The medical examiner's office ruled the cause of death "undetermined."
Prosecutors blasted the suggestion that Herrera could walk out of the courtroom after being convicted of serious domestic violence.
"The facts in this case are horribly tragic," said prosecutor Justin Wood. "You cannot imagine a more horrific set of circumstances."
The trial, in state District Judge Vanessa Velasquez's court, began Monday.
From: Houston Chronicle
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