Martinez should demand answers in Martens case

It’s been well established that Fabian Gonzales, one of three people charged in August’s rape and murder of 10-year-old Victoria Martens, should have been under close supervision by the criminal justice system — or even possibly behind bars — at the time of the young girl’s death.

What has yet to be established is why he was neither, and who — the state Department of Corrections or the 2nd Judicial District Court — is responsible. Each is blaming the other, and efforts by Albuquerque Journal investigative reporter Colleen Heild to establish, via public records, who’s responsible have been stymied by the Corrections Department.

This is no small matter. Though Corrections Department officials say there is no guarantee that Victoria would have been spared had Gonzales been under supervision, there’s a chance that she might have.

There’s also the larger question of whether the system that is supposed to keep people locked up or monitored is working.

Gonzales, 32, has been in trouble with the law since at least 2004. He pleaded no contest in February 2015 to two felonies — abandonment of a child and battery on a household member. Second Judicial District Judge Cristina Jaramillo sentenced him to two years of probation.

Corrections officials have insisted they never received notice from the court that Gonzales, an admitted methamphetamine user, was supposed to be on court-ordered, supervised probation. As a result, Gonzales was never assigned a probation officer, and he never checked in with the probation and parole office, a violation that could have landed him behind bars.

District Court officials in Albuquerque say the court orders on Gonzales and 23 other offenders were emailed to the Corrections Department in a timely manner in 2015.

As the finger-pointing began three months ago, then-Corrections Secretary Gregg Marcantel said he had assigned “teams” to do an extensive review to determine why Gonzales had escaped probation department oversight for nearly 18 months. He also requested numerous records from the court to aid the review — records that still hadn’t been picked up as of last week.

Marcantel resigned as secretary at the end of October, and Alex Sanchez, the agency’s deputy secretary who fielded media questions regarding Gonzales’ case, left the agency shortly thereafter and made a lateral transfer to the state Regulation and Licensing Department.

On Feb. 3, S.U. Mahesh — spokesman for new Corrections Secretary David Jablonski — said in a statement that the review “has shown that we didn’t find any proof of receiving the email packet containing the file of Fabian Gonzales.” He offered no information about the other 23 cases included in the emailed packet, but said the department was taking steps to “ensure that this does not happen again.”

On Tuesday, he said the other 23 cases have now been “accounted for.”

But that falls dismally short of the review’s stated purpose — to explain what went wrong in the Gonzales case.

Since Nov. 1, Heild has filed Inspection of Public Records requests seeking Corrections Department records that presumably could shed some light on where, exactly, Gonzales’ court-ordered probation went so badly off the rails and, just as importantly, who should be — or should have been — held accountable.

To date, she has received none of the requested records.

Gov. Susana Martinez, a former prosecutor who appointed both Marcantel and Jablonski, has a vested interest in the Martens case: The governor has long expressed a deep commitment to dealing swiftly and harshly with child predators.

She should direct Jablonski to not only comply immediately with the state’s Inspection of Public Records Act, she should insist on an explanation of why Gonzales was never put into the probation system.

A dead 10-year-old girl, her family and the rest of us deserve both.

— Albuquerque Journal