Martinez v. United States

Background

A jury convicted Johnny Martinez in 2003 of conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, charged in Count One, and using a firearm in connection with that conspiracy, charged in Count Three. The jury acquitted him of the substantive murder-for-hire charge in Count Two. In 2005, the court sentenced Martinez to life imprisonment on Count One and a consecutive ten-year sentence on Count Three. The Second Circuit affirmed the judgment, and the Supreme Court declined to review it.

Martinez, representing himself, filed several post-judgment motions: a motion to reduce his sentence; motions to vacate, set aside, or correct his sentence under 28 U.S.C. § 2255; a motion for clarification; motions for compassionate release; and a motion for appointment of counsel.

Section 2255 motion

The court first rejected the Government’s argument that it lacked jurisdiction because vacating Count Three would not release Martinez from custody while his life sentence remained. The court concluded that a prisoner may challenge one count of a sentence even when another sentence independently requires continued imprisonment.

The court then applied United States v. Davis, which held that certain offenses do not qualify as the required predicate offenses for a firearm conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c). Martinez’s conspiracy conviction under Count One was no longer a valid predicate for Count Three, and the Government conceded that point. The court therefore vacated Martinez’s Count Three conviction and its accompanying ten-year sentence.

The court rejected Martinez’s effort to vacate Count One based on Davis, Johnson v. United States, and Welch v. United States, explaining that those decisions did not affect his murder-for-hire conspiracy conviction. The court also denied his arguments concerning actual innocence and the sentencing-guidelines calculation. It held that those claims were filed more than a decade after the applicable one-year deadline and stated that the claims would fail on their merits as well.

The court determined that no resentencing hearing was necessary. Because the mandatory life sentence on the unchallenged Count One remained in place, the court said it could make the change by amending the judgment to eliminate the ten-year sentence attributable to Count Three.

Compassionate release

Martinez sought a sentence reduction under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i), a provision allowing compassionate release in appropriate circumstances. The court found that he had exhausted the required administrative process and that his medical conditions—including Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cardiomyopathy treated with a pacemaker, obesity, and reported COVID-19—qualified as extraordinary and compelling circumstances for purposes of eligibility.

The court nevertheless denied release after weighing the sentencing factors. It emphasized the seriousness of the murder-for-hire conspiracy, the death of one victim and severe injuries to another, Martinez’s flight to the Dominican Republic after his arrest, his prior criminal history, reported narcotics-related conduct, and ten prison disciplinary infractions. The court was not persuaded that he no longer posed a danger or that his rehabilitation justified release from the life sentence.

Disposition

Judge Denny Chin granted in part and denied in part Martinez’s § 2255 motion. The court vacated Count Three and reduced Martinez’s sentence by ten years; his Count One conviction and life sentence remained in place. The court denied compassionate release and the remaining motions, declined to issue a certificate of appealability for the denied portions of the sentence challenge, certified that an appeal from those portions would not be taken in good faith, terminated the listed motions, and closed the civil case.