The governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, has commuted the sentence of a 22-year-old woman imprisoned for the deadly shooting of a man, who allegedly forced her into prostitution.
Alexis Martin – a sex trafficking survivor – was 15, when her pimp was killed. She was charged with first-degree murder and robbery and sentenced to 21 years in prison. She was 17 when she went to jail.
Martin did not pull the trigger when her trafficker, Angelo Kerney was killed during a botched robbery. She was being raped in another room when the robber killed Kerney, the Cincinnati.com reported, citing Sasha Naiman, a lawyer for the nonprofit Ohio Justice & Policy Center, who has worked alongside Jennifer Kinsley, a private lawyer working pro bono, to free Martin since 2018.
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But the Summit County prosecutors argued she helped plot the robbery and was responsible for the murder, despite never pulling the trigger.
“Alexis Martin was 15 years old when she committed her crime and 17 when she went to prison,” Governor DeWine said during Friday’s news conference, NBC4i reported.
“She is a child sex trafficking survivor. She will be sent to a group home and will be under supervision for a period of time,” he added.
Martin is among the seven persons whose sentences were commuted by DeWine as part of efforts to decongest prisons and prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Ohio has so far recorded 13,725 confirmed cases of the deadly disease with 557 deaths and zero recovery.
For Naiman, Martin should not have been incarcerated in the first place, saying: “I’m really grateful to know her. I’m really excited to be with her as she accomplishes a lot in her future outside prison walls,” the Cincinnati.com reported.
Martin had spoken with Kardashian West in the Oxygen cable channel documentary, “Kim Kardashian West: The Justice Project” about her case, disclosing that she suffered sexual violence when she was a child.
