SCHENECTADY — Renee Stratton was beaten so severely inside a motel room in the summer of 2024 that both her lungs were punctured.
Bruises blackened her eyes and other parts of her body. So many of her ribs were broken that her “chest felt soft, almost as if there was no rib cage,” Assistant District Attorney Nick McDonald told jurors Wednesday afternoon.
Her injuries “tell a story of just how forceful and sustained this beating really was,” McDonald noted during his opening statements for the trial of Corydon Carlton, Stratton’s boyfriend and accused killer. “This case is about the brutally violent death of Renee Stratton.”…