{"id":18715,"date":"2010-06-24T07:56:34","date_gmt":"2010-06-24T13:56:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=18715"},"modified":"2010-06-25T07:35:51","modified_gmt":"2010-06-25T13:35:51","slug":"victim%e2%80%99s-father-comes-to-martinez%e2%80%99s-defense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2010\/06\/victim%e2%80%99s-father-comes-to-martinez%e2%80%99s-defense\/","title":{"rendered":"Victim\u2019s father comes to Martinez\u2019s defense"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Susana Martinez<\/p><\/div>\n

The father of a victim whose case is featured in Diane Denish\u2019s<\/a> newest attack ad on Susana Martinez<\/a> is coming to Martinez\u2019s defense after Democrats asked him to denounce the way Martinez\u2019s district attorney office handled the case.<\/p>\n

Joe Novak\u2019s daughter was the victim in the Hector Montes case<\/a>, one of two cases featured in the ad<\/a> from the Democratic gubernatorial candidate. I wrote in a commentary published Wednesday<\/a> that the ad makes an unsubstantiated leap in claiming that Martinez, Denish\u2019s GOP opponent, \u201callowed\u201d child predators to avoid the sex offender registry.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t require him to register as a sex offender.<\/p>\n

Novak, in a statement released by Martinez\u2019s campaign, said he did not want his daughter to testify in the case and the plea agreement was in his daughter\u2019s best interest. Here\u2019s his full statement:<\/p>\n

\u201cMy 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 Do\u00f1a Ana County DA\u2019s 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\u2019s office when we discussed how to proceed. The plea agreement was in my daughter\u2019s best interest.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Denish campaign\u2019s only response, from spokesman Chris Cervini, was to say that, \u201calthough no one on our campaign has contacted Mr. Novak, we certainly respect his wishes.\u201d<\/p>\n

What Cervini failed to mention was that Novak had been contacted by the state Democratic Party \u2013 a fact that was confirmed by the party\u2019s spokesman, James Hallinan. Hallinan also said the party \u201chas been contacted by, and has contacted, individuals in Do\u00f1a Ana County who have been on the wrong side of Ms. Martinez\u2019s 3rd\u00a0Judicial District Attorney\u2019s Office.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMs. 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,\u201d Hallinan said. \u201cWe will certainly respect everyone\u2019s privacy and we expect the same from Ms. Martinez.\u201d<\/p>\n

Victims supporting Martinez\u2019s handling of cases<\/h3>\n

Hallinan provided no information about specific victims who have \u201cbeen failed\u201d by Martinez\u2019s 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\u2019s office handled a case.<\/p>\n

Last week, the Martinez campaign responded to Denish\u2019s attack ad with its own ad<\/a> featuring Jessica, a victim in another sexual abuse case. And during the primary, the Martinez campaign came out with an ad<\/a> featuring the family of\u00a0Carly Martinez, a New Mexico State University student who was kidnapped, raped and murdered in 1998.<\/p>\n

Novak is also not the only parent of a victim whose case is featured in Denish\u2019s ad to speak in favor of plea bargaining his child\u2019s case. The mother of one of three victims in the other case featured in the ad \u2013 involving defendant Shawn Bohannon<\/a> \u2013 said during a plea bargain hearing that she was \u201cvery thankful\u201d for the plea agreement because she did not want her daughter to have to \u201crelive all of this stuff again,\u201d according to audio from the hearing<\/a> provided by the Martinez campaign.<\/p>\n

The Martinez campaign has maintained that, in the cases featured in Denish\u2019s ad and other sexual abuse cases from that time, Martinez \u201cfought for the maximum penalty in each case that the facts and circumstances would allow.\u201d The Martinez campaign said it \u201cdoesn\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The father of a victim whose case is featured in Diane Denish\u2019s newest attack ad on Susana Martinez is coming to Martinez\u2019s defense after Democrats asked him to denounce the way Martinez\u2019s district attorney office handled the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1],"tags":[108,142,107],"class_list":["post-18715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","category-uncategorized","tag-2010-election","tag-crime","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18715\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}