Story County Attorney Jessica Reynolds said Judge Steve Van Marel “agreed to the 17-year sentence because Martinez has a long history of harassment and is a habitual offender and never showed any remorse.” Maybe he has a long history of serious crime elsewhere, but not in Iowa. The case files 1 indicate that the charges against Martinez were: arson in the third degree (by itself, in Iowa, an aggravated misdemeanor), considered by the court a hate crime harassment in the third degree (a simple misdemeanor) and reckless use of fire. He came back at some point and told the bar, the people in the bar, that he was going to burn the place down, and at that point made a reference to burning “their flag.” Martinez was a “regular patron” of the bar-where he had been kicked out, after causing a disturbance-in front of which he burned the flag: Martinez is not a pleasant character, to hear Cmdr. That was the whole extent of the crime.Īggravating circumstances made it worse than just that. By his own admission, as you can see in a video, Martinez tore down the flag from the church, took it in front of a local dive, and burned it.
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