Johnny Martinez has help from pillars of the group.
Officers from the American Civil Liberties Union, regulation professors, a pastor, a highschool principal and two commissioners of the Los Angeles County Probation Division have all urged a decide to grant him bail.
Besides Martinez isn’t any peculiar defendant. Nicknamed “Crow,” he’s a member of the Mexican Mafia, federal prosecutors say, charged with ordering a sequence of murders that allowed him to keep up a grip over road gangs and jail inmates in Orange County. Prosecutors say Martinez was caught on a wiretap threatening to have somebody shot within the head and boasting of a number of murders.
Martinez turned eligible for bail in December after his 1995 homicide conviction was overturned. Charged at 18 with the homicide of a person killed throughout a brawl, Martinez was convicted beneath the speculation that the demise was a “pure and possible consequence” of collaborating within the struggle. Sentenced to 26 years to life in jail, Martinez spent the subsequent three many years submitting writs, appeals and petitions as a self-taught jailhouse lawyer.
After the state Legislature raised the usual of proof required to show a homicide, a decide decreased Martinez’s conviction to misdemeanor assault. However Martinez, now 48, didn’t stroll free as a result of a federal grand jury indicted him in 2022 for crimes he allegedly dedicated from state jail. Prosecutors allege he raked in unlawful earnings from gangs, drug sellers and jail inmates throughout Orange County.
“Anybody that was concerned in any form of felony ingredient, medicine, any form of racket you might consider, he received a proportion,” Martinez’s former right-hand man testified at a latest trial of a co-defendant within the federal racketeering case.
Martinez has pleaded not responsible. His attorneys requested a Justice of the Peace to launch him on bail awaiting his trial, scheduled for 2025. In help of their request, they filed a dozen letters that painting Martinez as a champion for civil rights, skillful litigator and advocate for peace.
Sean Garcia-Leys, a commissioner of the Los Angeles County Probation Division, stated he was first contacted by Martinez whereas working with the ACLU to defend two members of rival gangs in Placentia from a gang injunction. Martinez persuaded them to put aside their grievances and have become the “architect” of a county-wide gang truce, Garcia-Leys wrote.
“He constantly strives to enhance the lives of these round him,” he stated.
In an interview, Garcia-Leys stated he wrote the letter on behalf of his public-trust agency, the Peace and Justice Legislation Heart. “I undoubtedly didn’t accomplish that in my capability as a probation oversight commissioner.”
Garcia-Leys stated he was conscious of the allegations within the indictment however stood by his place that Martinez must be launched on bail. The danger of letting somebody out of jail must also be weighed towards the hurt attributable to preserving them locked up, he stated.
Martinez’s mom, Dolores Canales, herself a Probation Division commissioner, instructed the decide: “After all the things my son has been via, you’d assume he can be filled with anger and bitterness. However his robust perception within the regulation and in justice is what retains him going.”
As commissioners, Canales and Garcia-Leys are tasked with oversight of a sprawling regulation enforcement company that administers the county’s juvenile halls.
In a letter, Canales stated her son’s participation in a 2011 starvation strike over situations within the maximum-security jail at Pelican Bay led to her personal “awakening as to the cruel actuality of human lives being warehoused, and that incarceration was not the answer however an ever-growing drawback.”
Canales didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Courtroom information present Martinez obtained an award for “management growth” final 12 months from Orange County Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento, who wrote: “I commend you in your advocacy and repair to our group!”
In a press release, Sarmiento stated he helps packages that assist “justice-impacted people” change their lives. Although the “overwhelming majority” don’t commit new crimes, he stated, “sadly, we all know that not all who take part in such efforts will likely be profitable.”
Lecturers, nonprofit leaders, a psychiatrist and a highschool principal all urged the decide to see Martinez not as a menace to society however an asset. Angelica Camacho, assistant professor of felony justice at San Francisco State, referred to as Martinez a “extremely moral and principled man,” “robust champion of justice” and “warmhearted, caring particular person with an amicable private character.”
She described a profoundly totally different particular person from the one captured on a wiretap telling an Anaheim gang member who dared to interrupt him: “I’ve no drawback, homeboy, displaying as much as a motherf—’s home and taking pictures them point-blank vary.”
In opposition to his request for bail, prosecutors filed in courtroom transcripts of calls that Martinez allegedly created from a smuggled cellphone that had been tapped by the FBI.
“For those who ever interrupt me ever once more,” Martinez stated, based on a transcript, “your profession is over and I’m going to have you ever killed on the spot, OK ? My homeboy goes to place a gun to your head and f—ing shoot you.”
“If he thinks for one second that he can go towards the Mexican Mafia — hey, I already put 4 folks six ft beneath,” Martinez stated. “If he needs to be the fifth, let’s go.”
Though a pastor who befriended Martinez instructed the decide that in all their years of correspondence, not as soon as did he “ever counsel any affiliation with former gangs, notorious cartels or the Mexican Mafia,” prosecutors say there isn’t a doubt about his allegiances.
If his mom have been on her deathbed and considered one of his “brothers” requested him to do one thing, Martinez stated in one other intercepted name, “I must reply the decision of obligation, you realize, as a result of that’s what I signed up for.”
Martinez is accused of ordering the theft of a drug vendor in Placentia who was killed when he resisted the assailants. Martinez additionally allegedly directed the beating of an inmate whose throat was slit and a thwarted hit on a person named Rick who Martinez believed was hitting on a feminine good friend.
“I’m killing Rick,” Martinez instructed her in a textual content message, based on prosecutors. “You watch what I do to Rick, one other one bites the mud.”
Police arrested two males with weapons close to the supposed sufferer’s dwelling.
Martinez can also be charged with conspiring to homicide three males who labored for him.
After falling out of favor with Martinez, Gregory “Snoopy” Munoz was crushed at Calipatria state jail, stabbed by two inmates the next week after which shot within the again after getting out of jail, prosecutors say.
One other lieutenant, Michael “Shaggy” Cooper, angered Martinez by mendacity about his drug use and accumulation of money owed. “I may be a gangster,” Martinez instructed Cooper in a wiretapped name, “however I’m additionally a f—ing Christian, you realize? One factor that the Bible teaches us, Shag, is the reality shall set you free.”
After Cooper admitted utilizing heroin, Martinez stated he didn’t tolerate dependancy amongst his “employees” as a result of “I count on them to get up within the morning and let their job be their excessive.”
“If you wish to be a part of the Crow group,” he stated, “I count on the most effective of the most effective, massive canine. I take satisfaction in who we’re and, you realize, it’s about honor, integrity and representing to the fullest.
“Me personally, I don’t use medicine,” Martinez stated.
Martinez’s jail disciplinary document, nonetheless, included write-ups for utilizing heroin and possessing treatment used to deal with opiate dependancy, prosecutors say.
Cooper was stabbed 17 instances by three inmates at Calipatria on Martinez’s orders, prosecutors allege. A 12 months later, Cooper was attacked once more in an Orange County jail by inmates who beat him and slashed his throat.
Cooper and Munoz survived, however one other of Martinez’s underlings didn’t. Accused of stealing cash in a drug deal, Richard Villeda was lured right into a automotive and shot, his physique dumped on a road in Orange with seven bullets in his head and again. The three gunmen have been convicted final 12 months of the homicide.
Prosecutors say Martinez was caught on a wiretap warning an previous good friend about speaking to police. He introduced up Villeda and Munoz. “I received each of them guys like nothing,” he stated, based on a transcript.
“Now don’t assume for one second,” Martinez instructed the good friend, “that I couldn’t have that finished to you.”
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