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Thread: Tommy Jesse Martinez, Jr. - California Death Row

  1. #1
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    Tommy Jesse Martinez, Jr. - California Death Row


    Tommy Jesse Martinez, Jr.


    Facts of the Crime:

    Sentenced to death in Santa Barbara County on September 15, 1998 for the rape and murder of Sophia Castro Torres on November 15, 1996 in Oakley Park.

    Martinez was 19 years old on Nov. 15, 1996, when he raped, robbed and murdered Sophia Castro Torres, 35, at a baseball field at Oakley Park in Santa Maria.

    In addition to the murder of Torres, Martinez was convicted in attacks on three other women.

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    January 15, 2010

    S.C. Upholds Death Sentence in Santa Maria Rape, Murder

    The California Supreme Court yesterday unanimously upheld the death sentence for a man convicted of brutally raping and killing a 25-year-old woman and leaving her body on a baseball field in a Santa Maria park.

    The court rejected claims that police violated Tommy Jesse Martinez’s rights to counsel and silence over the course of several sessions of a multi-day interrogation. A Santa Barbara Superior Court jury returned a death penalty verdict after finding Martinez guilty of the 1996 rape, robbery, and murder of Sophia Castro Torres. They also convicted him of three other sexual assaults that took place before and after the killing.

    Police detained Martinez shortly after the last assault, based on a description by the victim, who subsequently identified him as the attacker.He was subsequently tied to the rape and murder by DNA testing.

    Under police interrogation, he admitted that he was the person who had called 911 anonymously from a pay phone, at a distance of several blocks from the park, and said he had witnessed the crime. He told the officers that he had gone to the park to buy drugs from Torres—who police said was a penniless transient and not a drug user or seller, according to all available information—but did not go into the park because he saw Torres being chased by two black women, whom he could not identify.

    He claimed he did not identify himself on the 911 call because he was high on drugs and did not want to get himself in trouble. He ultimately made a number of contradictory statements about the Torres case, and admitted trying to rob, but not rape, two of the other women.

    The defense sought to keep his statements to the police out of the trial, claiming that Martinez had invoked his rights to silence and to counsel. But Judge Rodney Melville found that he had been advised of his Miranda rights and that nothing that he said over the course of the several days constituted an invocation of his Fifth or Sixth Amendment rights.

    Specifically, the judge said the defendant did not invoke his right to remain silent when he told the first officer to question him, “That’s all I can tell you; ” or by telling detective who interrogated him the next morning, “I don’t want to talk anymore right now,” following which the detectives left before retuning later in the day; or by saying, “I think I should talk to a lawyer before I decide to take a polygraph,” after one of the detectives offered him one.

    Justice Carlos Moreno, writing for the high court, agreed that there was no constitutional violation as to the first two statements, citing cases involving similar comments by defendants. As to the polygraph comment, the justice noted that there was no polygraph, so the fact that the defendant was not given a lawyer at that point did not constitute a violation of the right to counsel.

    The case is People v. Martinez, 09 S.O.S. 175.

    http://www.metnews.com/articles/2010/mart011510.htm

  3. #3
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    On October 4, 2010, the US Supreme Court denied Martinez's certiorari petition on direct appeal.

    http://www.supremecourt.gov/Search.a...s/09-10077.htm

    On October 6, 2010, Martinez filed a habeas petition before the California Supreme Court.

    http://appellatecases.courtinfo.ca.g...9TUCAgCg%3D%3D

  4. #4
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    Somewhat related

    Convicted murderer comes from family with criminal past

    Isaac Martinez, a Santa Maria gang member who pleaded guilty this week to murdering his estranged wife — the mother of his four children — is part of a family with a history of serious crime including an older brother who is on California’s death row for murder.

    Martinez was arrested as a child along with his older brother, Tommy Martinez, for allegedly stealing cassettes from a department store, according to Supreme Court records.

    A few years later, the pair ran away together from the juvenile criminal institution Los Prietos Boys Camp in the Los Padres National Forest.

    As adults, each would commit murder along with a slew of other crimes.

    Isaac Martinez, 34, pleaded guilty Thursday to the first-degree murder of his wife, Maria Dejesus Martinez, as well as admitting to other allegations. He is expected to be sentenced to 75 years to life in prison when he returns to court on March 25.

    Isaac Martinez fatally shot Dejesus Martinez on Aug. 5, 2011, outside businesses near West McElhaney Avenue and Broadway in Santa Maria.

    Dejesus Martinez had separated from Martinez and planned to divorce him, alleging in court documents that she had endured 15 years of physical and emotional abuse by him.

    Martinez’s parents reportedly helped him flee the state after he murdered his wife, but authorities later captured him.

    Supreme Court documents reveal that Tommy Martinez, 35, was convicted in 1998 of the rape, robbery and murder of Sophia Castro Torres in Santa Maria, along with being convicted of assaulting three other women in the months surrounding the slaying.

    At the conclusion of a separate penalty trial, the Santa Maria jury sentenced Tommy Martinez to death for brutally beating and stabbing Torres to death Nov. 15, 1996, at Oakley Park. There was evidence that Martinez also raped her.

    Tommy Martinez did not know Torres, who was described as reclusive, free from drugs and alcohol and semi-homeless. She was in her mid-30s.

    According to the court documents, the Martinez brothers were born into a troubled household.

    Their parents, Tommy Martinez Sr. and Eva Martinez, met when he was 15 and she was 13, and Tommy Sr. and a number of his siblings already had trouble with alcohol.

    Eva Martinez’ parents forced her to marry Tommy Sr. when she became pregnant at age 16, according to the documents filed by prosecutors. The pair went on to have two more sons and eventually divorced.

    Before Tommy was a year old, his father was incarcerated for rape, and he remained mostly absent as the boys grew up due to repeated parole violations.

    Around the age of 12, Tommy Martinez started to get into trouble with the law, and began using illegal drugs and drinking alcohol.

    Court records show that Tommy Martinez robbed the cashier at a Santa Maria ice cream shop in 1992 when he was 14, and went on to commit another store robbery and a store burglary in the next two years.

    A series of assaults followed, including attempted sexual assaults, and the murder of Torres.

    Isaac Martinez, like his older brother and father, has a history of serious crime.

    In 2000, he was convicted in a felony vehicular manslaughter case out of Ventura County in which he was driving drunk and caused a wreck that killed one of his passengers.

    That conviction was preceded by a second-degree burglary conviction stemming from a 1998 incident in Santa Maria, according to Superior Court records.

    http://santamariatimes.com/news/loca...9bb2963f4.html
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