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N.Y. federal CO asks judge for no-prison sentence after inmate rape conviction

The former warden of the jail had previously asked a judge to sentence him to life in prison

Metropolitan Detention Center

This Jan. 8, 2017 file photo shows the Metropolitan Detention Center in the Brooklyn borough of New York.

AP Photo/Kathy Willens

By Noah Goldberg
New York Daily News

NEW YORK — A Brooklyn federal correctional officer convicted of repeatedly raping an inmate begged a judge to give him a no-prison sentence as he faces down a different kind of life behind bars.

“He failed to exercise sound judgment and made the worst decision of his life,” wrote Carlos Martinez’s lawyer in a sentencing memo filed in Brooklyn Federal Court Thursday, adding that the former lieutenant has “regret and remorse” about his criminal conduct toward the detainee.

Martinez spent five months from 2015 to 2016 ordering the inmate, who goes by “Maria,” to come to his office in the Metropolitan Detention Center to clean, but when she got there he would violently sexually assault her.

While he raped Maria, Martinez would scan surveillance cameras in his office to make sure that no one could catch him in the act.

Brooklyn federal prosecutors asked the judge in the case, Edward Korman, to sentence Martinez to more than 20 years in prison. The former warden of the jail had previously asked a judge to sentence him to life in prison.

“Martinez destroyed my soul, he dirtied my life leaving a stain on my body that can never ever be removed,” Maria said in a letter she wrote to the judge. “God you forgive him because I will never be able to do it, and as I told you before, I only want justice. And even though I cry in my bed, let him cry in prison.”

Martinez has spent the past four years in jail leading up to his trial and now awaits sentencing on Wednesday. He is being held at the Essex County Jail.

Maria sued Martinez in 2018, along with another lieutenant at the MDC, Eugenio Perez, over the sexual assaults.

Perez was also convicted in 2018 of sexually assaulting Maria — along with three other inmates — and was sentenced to 25 years in prisons.

The encounters with Martinez were so traumatic that on one occasion, Maria considered hitting him over the head with the mop she was using to clean, according to her lawsuit.

Another time, she hit Martinez’s hand when he grabbed at her before one of the assaults in a futile attempt to stop the rape.

“You know how much time you could get for hitting a lieutenant, don’t you?” Martinez asked her before groping her, twisting her arm and forcing himself on her, the suit says.

The lawsuit also alleges that the disgraced lieutenant raped another inmate in 1994, 21 years before he attacked Maria.

Just as Martinez is facing justice for this case, a Manhattan Federal Jail officer is set to go on trial this month for making a woman have sex with him in exchange for not getting her in trouble for smuggling drugs into the troubled lockup, prosecutors said.

Robert Adams, a guard at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan, discovered the woman trying to traffic in the contraband in July 2019. Instead of following jail protocol and reporting the incident, he demanded the woman meet him at a nearby pizza joint, then drove her to a motel where the two had sex, prosecutors said.

©2021 New York Daily News.

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