photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Servando Martinez-Vazquez is pictured Thursday, June 27, 2024, at his trial for aggravated domestic battery and other charges in Douglas County District Court.

A Douglas County jury on Thursday convicted a Lawrence man of beating a woman with a sex toy after he found it in her nightstand drawer and allegedly became enraged. The jury also found the man guilty of criminal damage to property, but acquitted him of the trial’s most serious charge: aggravated domestic battery by choking.

The jury rendered its verdicts in the case of Servando Martinez-Vazquez, 24, after approximately three hours of deliberations.

A woman testified in the two-day trial that in October of last year Martinez-Vazquez became angry after he discovered the sex toy — variously described at trial as a “dildo” and a “vibrator” — in her nightstand drawer, then choked and beat her with the artificial phallus.

In a 911 call played for the jury, the woman told the dispatcher that Martinez-Vazquez “found a dildo in my drawer and went crazy.” She said he beat her with it. She told the operator that she was not injured and didn’t need an ambulance. No mention was made of the choking during the 911 call that was played in court, but the jurors saw photos of red marks on the woman’s neck taken by a police officer, who testified that he saw red pinpricks, also known as petechia, on her face that could indicate recent choking. The jury found Martinez-Vazquez not guilty of the choking charge, a felony.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Defense attorney Razmi Tahirkheli gives his closing argument in the trial of Servando Martinez-Vazquez on Thursday, June 27, 2024, in Douglas County District Court.

Martinez-Vazquez’s appointed attorney, Razmi Tahirkheli, suggested to the jury of seven women and five men that the woman possibly made the accusations because she was upset that he was going to see another “girl.” He had argued that the redness on her face could have been caused by her crying.

In the course of the altercation that erupted after discovery of the sex toy — first verbal, then physical — the woman testified that Martinez-Vazquez broke her shower door, knocked a large hole in a wall and then, after she locked him out of the home, he violently kicked open her front door, causing $900 in damage.

Outside of the jury’s presence, Tahirkheli reviewed body camera footage with a Lawrence police officer of the woman telling the officer that Martinez-Vazquez told her “I’m going to find another (expletive for a woman)” after he became upset about the sex toy.

Martinez-Vazquez did not testify in his own defense at his trial.

Shortly after the verdicts came in, Judge Stacey Donovan sentenced him for the two misdemeanors. She gave him six months in the county jail for each offense, domestic battery and criminal damage to property, which the jury described as an act of domestic violence. She then suspended those sentences, to run concurrently, to 12 months of probation, and ordered him to pay $932 in restitution plus a little over $300 in various court costs. She also ordered him to complete a domestic violence assessment and get a mental health evaluation.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Assistant District Attorney Jenna Phelps gives her closing argument in the trial of Servando Martinez-Vazquez on Thursday, June 27, 2024, in Douglas County District Court.

The victim did not speak at the sentencing but said through Assistant District Attorney Jenna Phelps that she wants Martinez-Vazquez “to get some help.” Martinez-Vazquez said, “I have nothing to say.”

Martinez-Vazquez is slated to stand trial in another aggravated domestic battery case in September. In that case he is accused of choking a different woman in October 2022 and making a criminal threat.

In 2022, a rape victim in a different trial told the jury that Martinez-Vazquez had refused to help her as another man, Ray Charles Atkins, raped her when she was 17. She testified that Martinez-Vazquez said, “That’s not my problem.” Atkins was convicted of rape and is now serving a 13-year sentence, as the Journal-World reported. Martinez-Vazquez was not charged with any crime in that case.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Servando Martinez-Vazquez is pictured Thursday, June 27, 2024, at his trial for aggravated domestic battery and other charges in Douglas County District Court.