May 14, 2018 at 3:48 p.m.
Defense files reply brief as Martinson appeal heads to three-judge panel
Defense files reply brief as Martinson appeal heads to three-judge panel
By By River News staff-
Ashlee Martinson's defense team filed a motion in the third district Court of Appeals Dec. 22, 2017, arguing for a new sentencing hearing on the grounds that Oneida County circuit judge Mike Bloom, who handed down the 23-year sentence, "erroneously abused his discretion" when he remarked that Martinson "had a choice" when she shot her stepfather Thomas Ayers with a shotgun and stabbed her mother Jennifer Ayers on March 7, 2015 in their town of Piehl home.
The only choice Martinson believed that she had was whether to kill herself or stepfather, defense attorney Mark Schoenfeldt argued in the December motion.
Crucial to the defense argument is the 26-page "Appendix A" document that was entered into the court record at Martinson's March 11, 2016 plea hearing. It was during that hearing that Martinson pled guilty to two counts of second-degree intentional homicide.
The document outlined the cycle of sexual, physical, emotional and mental abuse Martinson suffered through for most of her life at the hands of various men in her mother's life.
At sentencing, Martinson's trial attorneys Thomas Wilmouth and Amy Lynn Ferguson attempted to paint a picture of Thomas Ayers as an abusive man with a history of criminal behavior to bolster this claim. They also introduced reports from mental health experts Brad E.R. Smith and Sheryl Dolezal who diagnosed Martinson as suffering from major depressive disorder as well as post-traumatic stress disorder.
Based on independent examinations of Martinson conducted while she was pursuing a plea of not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect defense, they both concluded she had likely been suffering some level of depression symptoms off and on since about age 8. The symptoms became noticeably more intense at around age 15 when her mother moved in with Thomas Ayers, they said.
While he conceded at sentencing that the facts laid out in "Appendix A" would cause any individual to feel sympathy for Martinson, Bloom said the abuse did not excuse the fact that two people died at her hands in a brutal manner. "The most important point that needs to be made by way of this proceeding is that yes, the defendant had a choice," he said.
It was that statement that formed the basis for a defense motion for post-conviction relief filed at the circuit court level last July. Bloom denied the motion Sept. 13, rejecting Schoenfeldt's argument that the facts laid out in "Appendix A" show the teen had "adequate provocation" or provocation that causes a reasonable person to lose normal self-control.
Bloom ruled the applicable statutes do not provide "as a matter of law" that a person found guilty of second-degree intentional homicide on the basis of adequate provocation "is absolved of volitional responsibility for their actions."
"I further conclude that the applicable statutes do not forego, as a matter of law, a court from considering at sentencing that a person found guilty of second-degree intentional homicide on the basis of adequate provocation had a choice," Bloom ruled. "And as such, I conclude that the court did not abuse its discretion by doing so and the motion that I did so is denied."
In his December 2017 appeal to the third circuit court of appeals, Schoenfeldt reprised many of the same arguments made in the post-conviction brief.
"In the first instance, the court was, of course, aware of the defendant's horrendous history of a lifetime of exposure to sexual, physical, mental and emotional abuse at the hands of virtually every adult that she had more than incidental contact with. It is the defendant's contention that the court erred in improperly assigning to her the duty to act in the same fashion and with the same knowledge of options that a 17-year-old who had not been abused and isolated for her entire life would have had," Schoenfeldt wrote in the brief. "The defendant was not a 'normal' 17-year-old. The defendant was, as a result, incapable of assessing the situation in the same way that a 'normal' 17-year-old would have done. The actual choice that the defendant believed that she had, at the moment of this incident, was whether to kill herself as she had initially planned or whether to kill Thomas Ayers."
Schoenfeldt also argued that Bloom's review of the legislative history of the statute governing second-degree intentional homicide to determine legislative intent was inappropriate.
To bolster his case, Schoenfeldt also cited State v. Derenne and Jones v. State which state that when a statute is written in objective terms not susceptible to more than one reading, the subjective intent of the lawmakers is not a controlling factor when sentencing someone who violated that statute. In fact, under the ruling of the second case, doing so is "impermissible" when "the legislation is clear on its face," he wrote.
He went on to argue that the language in the statutes covering first-degree intentional homicide is clear and that it also clearly includes several mitigating circumstances which constitute affirmative defenses to the charge. One of those affirmative defenses is adequate provocation which is also defined in a separate statute.
"It is, therefore, clear that the quantum of ambiguity needed to trigger a review of the legislative history of the meaning of the term 'adequate provocation' simply does not exist. The court, therefore, erroneously exercised its discretion by engaging in a review of the legislative history," he wrote.
Schoenfeldt also asserted that when Bloom accepted Martinson's guilty pleas he was conceding that adequate provocation applied in this case.
"By definition, someone who has completely lost self-control has also lost the ability to rationally consider his or her options. Has lost the ability to make choices," Schoenfeldt wrote. "The defendant concedes that the court, at sentencing, is not foreclosed from considering that the defendant acted intentionally. That she acted with a purpose. However, the defendant contends that the court is not thereby allowed to treat the state of mind inherently present in cases of adequate provocation as nothing more than a legal device that operates only to mitigate the charge, but that then need not be considered as part of the sum and substance of the case at sentencing."
"The existence of that state of mind - the fact that not only the defendant but any person placed in her situation would have been absolutely unable to exert any control over her actions - cannot be ignored at the time of sentencing. Objectively, the defendant had the choice not to pull the trigger," he added. "But, the defendant asserts, the operation of the element of adequate provocation means that she was, as a matter of law, unable to exercise that choice, even if she had perceived it. (Which according to the Agreed Statement of Facts, she did not.)"
The state Department of Justice filed a response to the defense motion March 7.
In his brief, assistant attorney general Jeffrey Kassel argued the court of appeals should reject Martinson's appeal for five reasons:
• Martinson's brief does not cite any authority to support the assertion Bloom exceeded his discretion.
• The argument is contrary to established case law that a circuit court makes its own assessment of the facts at sentencing.
• Under state statute, when district attorney Mike Schiek filed the amended information charging Martinson with second-degree intentional homicide/adequate provocation, he conceded only that he could not disprove the mitigating circumstances of adequate provocation beyond a reasonable doubt.
• The parties' plea agreement that Martinson acted in circumstances which established adequate provocation was not binding on the circuit court.
• There was information in the record which supported the circuit court's statement that Martinson had a choice.
Kassel also wrote that the two experts who evaluated Martinson both found - as Bloom said during the sentencing hearing - the disorders Martinson suffered from "did not deprive her of an appreciation of the wrongfulness of her conduct and also did not deprive her of the ability to conform her conduct to the law."
In a reply brief filed April 30, Schoenfeldt responded to Kassel's arguments.
"The defendant concedes that the court, at sentencing, is not foreclosed from considering that the defendant acted intentionally and with a purpose," he wrote. "That, after all, is a consideration that is inherent in the fact that the operation of adequate provocation mitigates the crime charged to second degree intentional homicide. However, the sentencing court is not thereby allowed to treat the state of mind inherently present in cases of adequate provocation as nothing more than a legal device that operates only to mitigate the charge, but that then need not be considered as part of the sum and substance of the case at sentencing. The sentencing court is not, the defendant contends, allowed, in the exercise of its discretion, to impose upon the defendant the same ability to make choices as would be found in a person who had not sustained a complete loss of control over his or her actions. The court is not, thereby, empowered to create "if only" situations that might, conceivably, have prevented the defendant from acting as she did, but which find no basis in fact in the situation in which the defendant actually found herself. It may be true, as the court stated at sentencing, that in some other, perhaps more perfect, world, a friendly voice or a supportive ally might have prevented this tragedy. But in the tragically imperfect world in which the defendant actually lived, there was no friendly voice. There was no supportive ally. There was only the defendant and her complete and utter loss of control. Her loss of the ability to make choices."
A three-judge panel will decide the case based on the written arguments filed.
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