One of the suspects in Sunday’s mass shooting in Sacramento served just four years of a ten-year sentence before being released despite the prosecutor’s strenuous objections.
Smiley Allen Martin, the second man arrested in the wake of Sunday’s mass shooting in Sacramento that killed six, has a criminal record going back to 2013 and had been in prison for brutally assaulting his girlfriend. He forced her to work as a prostitute and in 2018 beat and whipped her.
But he applied for early release and, despite a graphic letter sent to the judge begging him not to release Martin, the violent felon walked out of prison in February 2022.
Martin’s brother Dandrae was also arrested in the shooting where six people were killed and 12 were wounded. A third man was arrested in the vicinity of the shooting carrying a firearm illegally, but police have not charged him as yet in connection with the murders.
The letter to the parole board came as Schubert’s office and 44 other DAs were preparing to sue the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation over policies that they say would result in the “early release” of 76,000 inmates statewide.
“As shown by Inmate Martin’s pattern of conduct, he is an assaultive and non-compliant individual and has absolutely no regard for his victims who are left in the wake of numerous serious offenses,” Schubert’s office wrote last April. “He has no respect for others, for law enforcement or for the law. “If he is released early, he will continue to break the law.”
You have to wonder about the sanity of the parole board for letting this guy go after less than four years behind bars.
After being arrested for carrying an illegal automatic weapon, Martin was on probation when he walked into a Walmart store with three friends, shoved a clerk out of the way, and stole several Galaxy Notebooks. He was caught and pled guilty to robbery for which he served less than two years.
The brutal beating he gave his girlfriend should have kept him in jail for much longer;
“He located her hiding in her bedroom closet and hit her repeatedly with a closed fist on the face, head, and body, causing visible injuries,” the letter says. “He then dragged her out of the home by her hair to an awaiting car. After he put her in the car, he assaulted her with a belt.
“During the investigation, information was gathered that the victim had been working as a prostitute and that Inmate Martin had been assisting and encouraging her to be a prostitute. Text messages and social media conversations revealed that he would tell her what kind of sex buyer she should date, how much money to charge, how to accept payment, and what forms of payment she should accept.”
Incredibly, Martin was released as part of a program to “reward” good behavior in prison.
Prison officials dispute the characterization that its rule changes amount to “early releases,” arguing that changes they made in how good conduct credits are applied do not amount to such a policy.
But Schubert, who is now running for state attorney general as an independent, sued over the fact that CDCR implemented the changes as “emergency” regulations without public input, and prison officials subsequently opened a public comment period that ends on April 13.
Martin is the very definition of a career violent criminal. We’re told that inmates like Martin would stay behind bars, that only non-violent criminals were going to be released as a result of “criminal justice reform.”
I call BS on that and any effort at reform that doesn’t take into account that society must be protected from violent criminals like Martin by forcing them to serve their full sentences.
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