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Missing videotape cuts murder trial short
Lost interview evidence from 2006 case leads to lesser charge, 30-year sentence
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Prosecutors and Hall County Sheriff’s Office officials do not know what happened to a videotaped 2006 interview that was involved in a murder case years later. Victor Alfonso Martinez, 31, pleaded guilty to a lesser aggravated battery charge Aug. 27 in the March 2013 death of 6-year-old Edwin Ledesma after the Hall County District Attorney’s Office raised concerns over proceeding without the tape. Martinez received 12 years in prison to run consecutively with his previous 18-year sentence on child cruelty and aggravated battery charges when Ledesma was a newborn in 2006.