Denver judge overturns murder conviction, orders man freed after 27 years in prison

DENVER — Stephen Martinez is no longer a convicted murderer.

Denver District Judge Andrew Luxen erased his conviction Tuesday and ordered that Martinez, 58, be immediately freed from prison, where he has spent the last 27 years behind bars, convicted of first-degree murder in the 1998 death of 4-month-old Heather Mares.

After vacating the conviction, the judge took the additional step of dismissing the murder charge against Martinez, ending the criminal case against him entirely.

Luxen addressed Kim Estrada, Heather’s mother, directly as he dismissed the charges. She stood weeping in the courtroom’s gallery after begging the judge not to set Martinez free.

“I want you to know this is not an easy decision, and I feel for you and your family,” he told her.

Then he dropped the case. Martinez did not visibly react when the conviction was vacated and the case dismissed. Some of his family members dabbed their eyes. He is expected to be released from custody Tuesday.

Martinez’s freedom comes after attorneys with the Korey Wise Innocence Project, an organization within the University of Colorado Law School that provides free legal services to people who claim to be wrongfully convicted, took on his case about four years ago.

The attorneys found that Heather’s injuries — originally attributed to Martinez violently shaking the infant — were actually caused by a severe lung infection that ultimately caused her heart to stop. They presented the findings of several experts to Denver District Attorney John Walsh roughly 18 months ago.

“All of which credibly asserted that the cause of death in this case was pneumonia, and not abuse,” Walsh said after Tuesday’s hearing. “Our conviction review unit took that information and did an independent investigation with independent medical experts, which largely verified those prior events — in other words, that the cause of death either was pneumonia, or likely was pneumonia.”

Prosecutors ultimately agreed the conviction should be wiped away because Martinez’s original attorneys failed to present evidence of Heather’s lung disease during his original jury trial in 2000, leaving jurors with no explanation for the baby’s injures except abuse.

Prosecutors then sought to drop the case because they do not believe they could prove Martinez killed Heather if the case were to go to trial today, Walsh said.

“It is clear based on this new evidence that Stephen Martinez did not cause her death,” Martinez’s attorney, Jeanne Segil, said in court Tuesday.

Heather’s family strongly objected to the decision and said in court that they still believe Martinez killed the baby.

“I beg you from our family to yours, if you have one, please don’t let this animal out in the street,” Estrada told the judge. “He doesn’t deserve it and neither do we.”

Martinez was dating Estrada in 1998 and was alone with the baby for 15 minutes at their home in the 400 block of South Pecos Street on Oct. 17, 1998, when he called 911 to report that Heather was choking. She died later that day at a hospital.

Further investigation showed that the baby had suffered a skull fracture, ruptured blood vessels in her eyes, brain bleeding and swelling. At the time, medical and child abuse experts saw that triad of injuries as tell-tale signs of child abuse, but now, experts recognize that many other situations can also cause those injuries, his attorneys wrote in a petition for post-conviction relief.

Heather had ongoing respiratory issues from the time she was born, Martinez’s attorneys found, and the lung infection caused the symptoms previously attributed to abuse by Martinez. The skull fracture was likely caused when Martinez tripped while holding Heather a couple weeks before her death, the attorneys found.

On the night he was arrested, Martinez confessed to shaking Heather and banging her head against a crib, but later recanted that confession. His attorneys believe it was a false confession, and said the physical evidence in the case doesn’t match up with Martinez’s description.

“He had never been in trouble with the police before, he had never been interrogated, and that night after making the same statements four times explaining that the baby had choked, telling them — four different times — the truth, eventually he made a false confession and said that he had shaken the baby,” Segil said. “We now know today that that was false.”

Estrada dismissed the notion that the confession was false and said she worries that Martinez will hurt someone after his release.

“She could not stand up for herself, she could not fight back, she couldn’t do anything,” Estrada said. “She was an innocent 4-month-old baby… He is the one who confessed that he did it. He is the one who said he did it. He wasn’t under any distress, he wasn’t told what say. He has shown no remorse, no nothing about taking our daughter, our only daughter, away from a family who would have enjoyed her life.”

Walsh said erasing Martinez’s murder conviction is an example of the criminal justice system working.

“We do not do this lightly,” Walsh said. “It’s our job, in the DA’s office to seek justice in every single case, and that means sometimes we have to do the right thing even when it is painful, even when it is difficult to do. And that is exactly what this case is.”

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