Flag Burner Gets 16 Years
If you all knew Poetrooper as I do, you’ll understand he lives to push buttons (especially mine) and stays on the edge. He sends us this article, and be warned; place all beverages firmly on your desktop and remove all throwable objects from easy reach before reading any further.
Ready?
Iowa Man Gets 16 Years for Burning LGBT Flag
By Jared Harris
As leftists are free to torch U.S. flags across the nation, an Iowa man is paying a heavy price for burning a rainbow LGBT pride flag.
Adolfo Martinez of Ames was sentenced Wednesday to a whopping 15 years in prison for the hate crime of arson, according to The Associated Press.
In addition to spending a decade and a half in prison for burning the LGBT flag, the 30-year-old Martinez also will be serving an additional year for his use of fire and 30 days for harassment.
Martinez was arrested in June after taking the rainbow flag from the United Church of Christ in Ames.
The act was considered a hate crime because the flag represents a sexual orientation.
The rest of the article, if by the odd chance anyone cares, may be viewed here: Western Journal
Thanks, Poe. I think.
Category: Crime, Diversity, Guest Link, WTF?
I would have given the man 6 months and/or a fine for THEFT of the flag (it wasn’t his to begin with), and that’s all.
This is a travesty, a prime example of our current two tier (in)justice system.
“Rules for thee, but not for me”, will (should) soon become, “If the law will not protect me from thee, it also will not protect thee from me”.
That seemed to be too stiff a penalty for just burning a flag like that. This article indicates that Adolfo Martinez was convicted and sentenced based on his being a habitual offender:
https://www.kcci.com/article/man-charged-with-taking-burning-lgbtq-flag-found-guilty-of-multiple-crimes/29714879?utm_campaign=KCCI&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=trueAnthem%3A+New+Content+%28Feed%29#
He appears to have a criminal history.
Your link provides no info about his being an habitual offender. Even if he is, 16 years is an excessive sentence for a violating a law that should not even be on the books.
Does this mean that if a counter-demonstrator in Iowa burns an LGBT flyer that he’s handed at a gay rally that he has committed a hate crime?
This case stinks to high hell.
Ninja, you have the search skills–can you find out more about this judge and prosecutor?
Poetrooper:
Will do!
I just clicked on the link and it’s there. Click on the link, then scroll down, as the link will take you to the top portion of the page. But, when you scroll down, you’ll get to the part that I quoted.
They say, right there, that he was a habitual offender. Taking private property and burning it was just one offense out of the list of offenses that he had been credited with.
When I read of a situation where someone received a stiff penalty when the crime suggests something not as stiff, there’s usually a history of involvement with law enforcement and with the courts… A history that could be pulled up.
Besig, I saw the reference to “habitual offender” but was expecting some detail regarding that designation. I scrolled and scrolled and found none. I’m somewhat skeptical of that term unless I know what particular violations led to it being applied. Many times they are nothing more than a series of minor drug possession busts or domestic beefs.
Poe – my guess, based upon very old information from a few decades ago, is that he has multiple misdemeanor convictions in the past. If his priors were felonies, the mandatory enhanced sentencing would have been greater than 16 years. But, the terms vary greatly from state to state. In some jurisdictions, as little as a 3rd felony conviction can/would result in a life sentence. Or, that’s how it used to be. Haven’t read anything about that stuff lately.
Your original statement was that my link provided no information about his being a habitual offender. A single statement in the link is all that’s needed to prove that statement wrong.
In every instance where I’ve read about someone getting a stiff sentence for something that normally got a lesser sentence, the person receiving a stiff sentence had a criminal history. This is more than just minor drug possessions, there were other offenses that received a conviction prior to the later, stiffer, sentence.
This is why I did an additional search until I found verification of that suspicion.
A single statement, about his being a habitual offender, was all I needed to see this as being consistent with the other situations that I’ve read where someone got a stiffer than normal sentence for the crime and the conviction.
I went through Ninja’s links below and saw that the stiffer penalty was warranted. The guy was happy that he burnt the flag (private property in this case), was enthusiastic about it, and even had a smug look in his mugshot. His reported statement about there being nothing that the Judge could do to deter him from doing things like this in the future is consistent with his smugness and assumption that his errant actions are “justified”.
At this point, this is more than just about his burning a flag. Replace the flag with just about any other kind of private property, and have the perpetrator say that he was honored to destroy someone else’s property, and that he would continue to do things like this regardless of what sentence he received, and add to that a criminal history (track record and stated continuation of this track record), and people would see the logic behind the bigger sentence.
once they hand the flyer to him, a transfer or ownership has taken place. It would then be his to do with as he pleases.
He stole another persons property.
Hope he pled not guilty and that his attorney plans to appeal.
The burning of our beloved Stars and Stripes should be a hate crime too. If you hate this flag and what it stands for then…just leave.
America…The Home of the Free…because of the Brave.
Articles like this are really prolly good for me. They get my heart rate up and I get exercise getting up to go fetch back the items I threw.
If the flag wasn’t his, then at worst it was petty theft and/or vandalism. Misdemeanor at most. His lawyer should appeal this shit all the way to SCOTUS.
I do not understand. Charge him with theft, arson, disturbing the peace, that makes sense. A hate crime? If burning the LGBTQAEIOU and sometimes Y flag is a hate crime, then burning ANY flag, to include the U.S. flag, is a hate crime.
Hate crime laws are a joke.
Sadly, it’s worse than a joke, it is an unconstitutional usurpation of the rights guaranteed under the equal protection clause.. as the saying goes “some animals are more equal than others”..
Or as I heard it stated the other day it used to be referred to as “the love that dare not speak it’s name”.. now its “the love that won’t shut the fuck up about it!”
That’s exactly it. Hate crime laws say “this person’s life is worth more than yours”. You want equality, I’m good with that. You don’t get to be special, for any reason.
You’re right. These hysterically insane, unconstitutional laws DO generally read in a way that mentions “nationality” as a criterion for a hate crime. The last time I checked, The United States of America IS a nation; one that everyone who reads or posts here will fight to the end to preserve. So why isn’t it a hate crime to burn The U.S. Flag? That said, unless he lit it up with a gallon of gas inside a kindergarten class 16 years is excessive.
Kinda depends upon local ordinances about burning things, anything. If it’s against the law to ignite newspapers, trash, or other stuff, then the same law should apply to flags.
Meanwhile in Indiana:
I guess Flags have more value than Children.
“Indiana Woman Sentenced To 4 Years In Prison For School Bus Stop Crash That Killed 3 Children in 2018”:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/12/18/indiana-school-bus-crash-prison-sentence-alyssa-shepherd/2694891001/
“Alyssa Shepherd, the Indiana woman found guilty in the October 2018 bus stop crash that killed three children and seriously injured a fourth, was sentenced to four years in prison on Wednesday.”
“Shepherd, 25, who faced up to 21 1/2 years in prison, was also ordered to serve three years on house arrest, with three years suspended with probation. Her driver’s license was suspended for 10 years.”
“Shepherd struck and killed 9-year-old Alivia Stahl, and the girl’s 6-year-old twin half brothers, Xzavier and Mason Ingle. Shepherd did not stop for a waiting school bus on Indiana 25, north of Rochester in the morning hours of Oct. 30, 2018. The bus driver had the vehicle’s stop arm and flashing lights activated as the children were crossing the road.”
“A boy unrelated to the three siblings, 11-year-old Maverik Lowe, was also hit by Shepherd but survived with serious injuries.”
To be fair, I can see why the judge was being lenient with her being a mother and this being her first criminal charge. If that wasn’t the case, she probably would have gotten the full sentence or very close to it, plus she now has that charge permanently on her record and killing three children and seriously injuring a fourth is probably going to hurt her chances of finding future employment. That being said, I think six years would have been better. Not saying you’re wrong, just my take on it.
the point being, she took the lives of three children and injured a fourth. But she’s getting 25% of the sentence that someone got for burning a piece of cloth after stealing it.
Ridiculous bullshit because this is courts of law saying human life isn’t worth as much as someone else’s “sexual orientation” and the representation of that.
I understand that MSG Eric. I think the flag sentence is ridiculous. I didn’t say it wasn’t and I didn’t say that I did not find it ridiculous. I was just giving my take on this sentence in which I can see the judge’s reasoning though I believe the sentence should have been stiffer.
This happened in Spark’s and my old stomping grounds. Back when it happened I was talking to friends that still live there and they were telling me there was more to the story that would explain the light sentence, but for the life of me I don’t remember what it was. Maybe if Sparks is still around he had heard something.
If Martinez were a veteran he would’ve received five years of probation with mandatory anger management and cultural sensitivity training. Oh well, Thor, Bubba, et al. will welcome Adolfo with open arms and legs.
Flag burning is a personal hot button issue.
Flag burning is in NO WAY an expression off free speech.
It IS wilful and malicious desecration of our national symbol, and by extension a denial of our country.
So don’t trot out that idiocy from SCOTUS, it’s leftwit spin.
It is not complicated; You are not allowed to steal other people’s flags and burn them.
Buy a LGBTQ flag and burn it. Legal.
Steal a LGBTQ flag and burn it. Criminal.
Buy a US flag and burn it. Legal.
Steal a US flag and burn it. Criminal.
If any criminal act is motivated by hatred or prejudice against a protected class the. That crime may be charged with aggravated circumstances and treated as a “hate” crime depending on the laws in your jurisdiction.
Nothing that happened in this case is unfair, unwarranted, or a miscarriage of justice. He is being afforded due process and will be given and opportunity to appeal.
You can burn your own LGBTQ flag even if you are doing it because of hate or prejudice because the underlying act is not criminal.
Dumbass, as usual, you’re not reading for comprehension..Literally EVERYONE above said he’s guilty of stealing the flag, and should be charged for it, as well as applicable local laws related to unauthorized burning / arson. The issue that most if not all of us have with it (and you’re too dense to understand, and too feeble minded to realize it violates the Constitution) is the “hate crime ” bullshit that’s attached to it..and that is what makes it, to use your words, unfair, unwarranted, and a miscarriage of justice.
The failure of your argument is that it rests entirely on the existence of “protected classes” a politically-correct aberration inserted into American jurisprudence by your kind to encourage political loyalty.
Due to my age, I’m in one of those supposed classes–I still think it is despicable to have such laws in a free society and I’ll damned sure never ever vote for a Democrat again.
I self-identify as a “protected class”. Protected by St. John Moses Browning and the second amendment.
So the clown here:
https://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=93654
should only be charged with defrauding the DMV.
Unless you do agree with “SOME” protected classes, just the ones you like.
You literally just repeated everything that we’ve all said. Somehow, your “logic” twisted it into being correct when you say it, but wrong when anyone else says it. And you wonder why you’re never taken seriously.
Dude, Lars… you really are a cocksucker.
“Buy a US flag and burn it. Legal.”
Mostly. Flag burning is illegal in Washington DC.
have a citation for that?
You do realize that you are agreeing with what everyone on here has been saying, right? Even when you are agreeing with everyone you still come out as a pompous asshole.
thank you.
He should’ve just crapped in a Wal-Mart and wiped his ass with it.
I see no crime here since it was “Flagged”/grin
Poetrooper:
The Prosecutor for the case was Jessica Reynolds, a Democrat from Story County, Iowa, who was appointed in 2016:
https://www.amestrib.com/news/20160930/reynolds-appointed-as-new-story-county-attorney
“During her presentation to the board, Reynolds went into her history as an attorney. She graduated from Drake University Law School in 2004. She has served as the Assistant Attorney for Story County since 2008, before that she was an assistant county attorney in both Kossuth and Warren Counties.”
In this news article about, she said the following:
“I believe him to be very dangerous,” Story County Attorney Jessica Reynolds said. “That’s why my office recommended the maximum sentence.”
“Reynolds said the judge agreed to the 17-year sentence because Martinez has a long history of harassment and is a habitual offender and never showed any remorse.”
“The defendant stated that there was nothing the judge could to stop him from continuing this behavior and that he would continue to do this no matter what,” she said.”
https://www.kcci.com/article/adolfo-martinez-sentenced-for-setting-fire-to-church-lgbtq-flag/30281099#
Ames, Iowa is a liberal college town, home of Iowa State. I searched for the judge’s political affiliation and it’s not available. But he’s survived two retention elections and to do that in a place like Ames, you can bet he’s a liberal Democrat.
Poetrooper,
More information on the Prosecutor:
Background Educational Info:
https://www.ballotready.org/ia/iowa-story-county-attorney/jessica-a-reynolds
Her contact information:
https://www.storycountyiowa.gov/90/County-Attorney
She endorses Pete Buttigieg:
“County Attorney Jessica Reynolds introduced and endorsed Buttigieg.”
“[We] are going to help get him elected, ladies and gentleman, the next president of the United States — Mayor Pete,” Reynolds said.
https://www.iowastatedaily.com/news/iowa-caucus-2020-primary-democrats-democratic-pete-buttigieg-president-presidential-town-hall/article_51e0f4cc-f085-11e9-94ff-c754580f6edb.html
Her support of Buttgoogle is something for his appeal Attorney, good fuel for that fire!
Poetrooper:
Another interesting article about the Prosecutor:
https://www.amestrib.com/news/20190723/county-attorney-details-confrontation-with-supervisor-olson
It’s behind a firewall.
Poetrooper,
The Judge in the Case was Judge Steven P. Van Marel.
I hope this link works.
https://www.iowacourts.state.ia.us/ESAWebApp/TIndexFrm
Background Info On Judge Steven P. Van Morel:
https://www.iowacourts.gov/iowa-courts/district-court/judicial-district-2/judges-and-magistrates/steven-p-van-marel/
https://ballotpedia.org/Steven_P._Van_Marel
Poetrooper:
When you go to the initial link on the case, click on “Criminal Charges and Disposition”.
You will see the Judge’s name.
https://www.iowacourts.state.ia.us/ESAWebApp/TIndexFrm
Hope this helps.
ninja
Poetrooper:
Here is a link if you wish to rate Judge Steven P. Van Murel:
http://www.therobingroom.com/iowa/Judge.aspx?id=19556
Ninja, thanks for the help. See my other comments about the judge.
“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” –Voltaire
Poetrooper:
You will find other charges against Martinez at this site.
Some of the charges are speeding, driving without a license.
https://www.iowacourts.state.ia.us/ESAWebApp/SelectFrame
After going to that link, click on “Trial Court”.
Type in his name.
Click the name that matches the Birthmonth/Year of March 1989 (03/1989).
Hope that helps.
Speeding? Driving without a license? The horror!
And the two felonies he was previously convicted of.
Here’s a year-old case in which the same judge apparently believed that deserting a starving animal and leaving it in a cage hanging over a two-inch base of feces is not nearly as serious an offense as stealing and burning a gay flag.
****************************************************
An Ames couple was found guilty on Friday of animal neglect, and sentenced to two days in jail.
Cillia Kennaye Davis and Darius Graves were arrested earlier this year after authorities found a starving dog trapped in a cage and surrounded by feces in April.
Court records show Story County deputies went to a home in the Hickory Grove Court Mobile Home Park, 2279 E. 190th St., on April. 2. According to court records, deputies were serving a writ of possession and walked through the home to ensure Davis and Graves had moved out. That’s when they found what appeared to be a female husky in the home’s bathroom, in a wire cage hovering over the bathtub. In the tub was approximately 2 inches of feces, records show.
Records show there was no food or water, and that the dog was so thin it’s ribs were showing.
In a non-jury trial, District Court Judge Steven P. Van Marel found Davis and Graves guilty of animal neglect, a simple misdemeanor.
The Story County Attorney’s Office requested a 30-day sentence, with all but seven days suspended. Van Marel imposed the two-day sentence and a fine.
****************************************************
Van Marel is the judge who sentenced the flag-burner to 16 years.
Coincidently, the Prosecutor (Democrat) on this case endorses Mayor Pete for President.
😉
See any connections (Hint-Hint)
In a comment above, I was going to surmise that the judge might be a Buttplug supporter and decided not to do so.
Seeing this, I will now register that surmise.
It is my studied opinion and fervent hope and prayer that anyone who abuses an old person, child, or animal has the same thing done to them that the person did to the abused. And THEN…Hang the bastards.
That’s a felony in my state. Period.
If I’m remembering correctly, Trump just signed new Federal law recently making it a felony in all 50 States.
It’s political. That is all.
Where’s the ACLU in all of this?
….
That’s what I thought. The take away: Skokie was a different America.
Found what those ACLmUnists have been up to, really important work.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/aclu-tampons-mens-room-menstrual-equity
Because thats what men need, tampons.
FFS.
He was a repeat offender with two previous felony convictions. This tripled the maximum sentence.
Additionally, It was a hate crime. He threatened patrons he believed to be gay l at a bar with burning the bar down then stole a flag and returned to burn it.
When questioned he explicitly said it was out of his hatred for gays.
Hate crime statutes are necessary.
Otherwise there is often little that can be done to protect a community from low level crimes motivated from prejudice toward its members.