Defense rests in man’s oral-sex choking trial

A man who asked a Broward judge for permission to show his penis to the jury in his murder trial this week dropped his request after a retired medical examiner testified on his behalf.

Richard Henry Patterson, 65, kept his private parts private as defense attorney Ken Padowitz rested his case Friday afternoon. Closing statements are scheduled for Monday.

The attorney’s decision came after former Broward Medical Examiner Ronald Wright testified that Francisca Marquinez may have died while performing oral sex on Patterson in late October 2015. He also said she may have suffered a heart attack or a stroke.

Any one of those possibilities is more likely than Marquinez having her face smothered by a pillow, said Wright, who reviewed the official autopsy results and shared his findings with the jury Friday morning.

Padowitz told jurors during opening statements this week that Wright would support the theory that Marquinez died while performing oral sex. Wright did that Friday, but by suggesting other causes of death, he handed the defense alternative explanations that don’t require Padowitz to explain how Marquinez could have choked to death without Patterson noticing.

Padowitz hinted at the possible shift in strategy during his opening statement. “The last thing these two adults did together was oral sex. He thought that’s how she died,” Padowitz said. Wright’s testimony Friday gives Padowitz leeway to say Patterson was mistaken in his belief that he thought Marquinez choked on his penis.

But the jury has not heard Patterson’s version of Marquinez’s death from anyone other than Padowitz. Patterson did not take the stand. On Oct. 28, 2015, the day he came forward, Patterson told his exgirlfriend and his daughter that he “did something terrible” and that he “choked Francisca,” never clarifying how that happened.

Prosecutor Peter Sapak is arguing that Patterson choked Marquinez and left her body to decompose for more than a day, possibly more, before contacting his ex-girlfriend, who put him in touch with his defense lawyer, who alerted police.

But an autopsy could not show how it happened. If there were bruises on the victim’s neck, experts on both sides said, the decomposition was severe enough by Oct. 29 to obscure any evidence of it. Her neck bone was not broken and the cartilage around her throat did not show the kind of damage medical examiners expect to find when someone is strangled.

There was other evidence, such as fluid buildup in the lungs, indicating the possibility of asphyxiation as the cause of death, but neither the defense’s expert nor the prosecution’s could say with certainty that’s how Marquinez, 60, died.

Padowitz said he did not follow through on his motion to display Patterson’s penis to the jury because it wasn’t necessary. “The state did not prove its case, so I didn’t need him to testify or to go through with the demonstration, which would have been highly embarrassing and humiliating both for him and for the memory of his girlfriend.”

The defense made a routine request for the judge to find Patterson not guilty without waiting for the jury. Judges often reject those requests, but not always. Broward Circuit Judge Lisa Porter did not — she will apparently wait for the jury to reach a decision before announcing her own.

RAFAEL OLMEDA/STAFF Former Broward Medical Examiner Ronald Wright testified Friday that it’s not likely that Francisca Marquinez was strangled by Richard Henry Patterson.