Probably worth updating this, and probably worth mentioning why.
Martinez' sentencing has been repeatedly pushed down the road. It's currently set for September 17th, 2024.
This is, surprisingly, for a very good reason.
In a relatively recent Supreme Court case,
New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen,
597 U.S. 1 (2022), the Supreme Court completely reworked the test for deciding whether gun regulations are constitutional. Explaining the whole thing is a bit beyond my pay grade. Suffice it to say that a fair number of laws that would have previously been held consitutional probably now wouldn't be. And the lower courts are still trying to figure out exactly what the flark that means, especially when it comes to the felon-in-possession statutes that Martinez was convicted of.
And in particular, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held in in a followup case,
United States of America v. Steven Duarte, AKA Shorty,
22-50048, that the felon-in-possession statute was unconstitutional under
Bruen when it's applied to someone convicted of only nonviolent crimes.
The normal cite for that case would be
US v. Duarte, but darn it, any case with "Shorty" in the caption deserves to be cited in full.
Anyway, diminutive nicknames aside, the latest sentencing-punting order in Martinez' case puts the result well: "Like Duarte, Mr. Martinez has no violent prior convictions. As such, the Court’s opinion calls into question the validity of Mr. Martinez’s conviction. The government has filed for rehearing in Duarte. Whether it will remain good law is uncertain. At this stage, defense counsel would be ineffective if she allowed Mr. Martinez to proceed to his sentencing when the constitutionality of his offense of conviction is in flux."
