Susana Martinez
The father of a victim whose case is featured in Diane Denish’s newest attack ad on Susana Martinez is coming to Martinez’s defense after Democrats asked him to denounce the way Martinez’s district attorney office handled the case.
Joe Novak’s daughter was the victim in the Hector Montes case, one of two cases featured in the ad from the Democratic gubernatorial candidate. I wrote in a commentary published Wednesday that the ad makes an unsubstantiated leap in claiming that Martinez, Denish’s GOP opponent, “allowed” child predators to avoid the sex offender registry.
In that case, Montes was charged with one count of molesting a girl at Las Cruces High School but agreed in 2007 to a plea bargain in which he instead admitted to contributing to the delinquency of a minor. The conviction didn’t require him to register as a sex offender.
Novak, in a statement released by Martinez’s campaign, said he did not want his daughter to testify in the case and the plea agreement was in his daughter’s best interest. Here’s his full statement:
“My daughter was the victim in the Montes case. I was contacted yesterday by the Denish campaign and asked to say that I felt I was done wrong by the Doña Ana County DA’s office. I told the Denish campaign that is not true and that the prosecutor did what was in the best interest of my daughter. In that case, I had moved my daughter to Nevada to a rehabilitation school to help her recover from her issues. I did not want to take her back to New Mexico and drag her through a trial and communicated that to the DA’s office when we discussed how to proceed. The plea agreement was in my daughter’s best interest.”
What Cervini failed to mention was that Novak had been contacted by the state Democratic Party – a fact that was confirmed by the party’s spokesman, James Hallinan. Hallinan also said the party “has been contacted by, and has contacted, individuals in Doña Ana County who have been on the wrong side of Ms. Martinez’s 3rd Judicial District Attorney’s Office.”
“Ms. Martinez opened the door by putting victims on TV. It is only fair that individuals who have been failed by Ms. Martinez have the same opportunity to tell their story,” Hallinan said. “We will certainly respect everyone’s privacy and we expect the same from Ms. Martinez.”
Victims supporting Martinez’s handling of cases
Hallinan provided no information about specific victims who have “been failed” by Martinez’s office. By contrast, Novak is the third victim or family member of a victim to speak positively during the gubernatorial campaign about the way Martinez’s office handled a case.
Last week, the Martinez campaign responded to Denish’s attack ad with its own ad featuring Jessica, a victim in another sexual abuse case. And during the primary, the Martinez campaign came out with an ad featuring the family of Carly Martinez, a New Mexico State University student who was kidnapped, raped and murdered in 1998.
Novak is also not the only parent of a victim whose case is featured in Denish’s ad to speak in favor of plea bargaining his child’s case. The mother of one of three victims in the other case featured in the ad – involving defendant Shawn Bohannon – said during a plea bargain hearing that she was “very thankful” for the plea agreement because she did not want her daughter to have to “relive all of this stuff again,” according to audio from the hearing provided by the Martinez campaign.
The Martinez campaign has maintained that, in the cases featured in Denish’s ad and other sexual abuse cases from that time, Martinez “fought for the maximum penalty in each case that the facts and circumstances would allow.” The Martinez campaign said it “doesn’t seem Denish understands all of the circumstances that surround these cases, such as the toll a criminal trial and testifying can take on a sexual abuse victim.”