Gov. Martinez on Stephanie Lopez: ‘Justice was not served’
Baby Brianna’s case was tried by the current governor of New Mexico.
Gov. Susana Martinez was the Doña Ana County district attorney back in 2003. It’s a case she used to help change child abuse laws in the state.
ABC-7 was the only station to get a sit-down interview with the Governor following Stephanie Lopez’s release from prison Wednesday morning.
She said the fact that Lopez allowed the horrific abuse to continue should have resulted in her spending life in prison. Gov. Martinez says just was not served.
“It is horrific. It’ll always be burned into my brain,” said Martinez. She recalled the horrors that 5-month-old Brianna suffered.
Now that Lopez is free, ABC-7 asked Martinez how she felt.
“It makes me really sad that Stephanie Lopez is leaving prison,” she replied.
“She is going to do something Baby Brianna will never be able to do: walk the streets, you know pursue her dreams. What Stephanie Lopez did constitutes being in prison for life.”
Martinez said when she initially prosecuted the case, the maximum penalty was 18 mandatory years in prison. It could be enhanced by a third if there was proof.
Martinez would go on to fight to have that penalty increased.
But the recent death of 10-year-old Victoria Martens in Albuquerque, and the killings of Hatch Police Officer Jose Chavez and Alamogordo Police Officer Clint Corvinus, is why the Governor says she is going one step further.
“People are saying when is the death penalty going to be brought back to New Mexco for people who kill our law enforcement officers? The correctional officers who are in those prisons and also anyone who murders our children?”, she asked.
She added, “That’s what they’re talking about. They’re demanding the death penalty be brought back to New Mexico.”
The governor plans to introduce capital punishment in the next legislative session.
She’s also working to have the law about child abuse resulting in death apply to children up to age 18. It currently excludes teens.
