A registered sex offender was sentenced Monday to 10 years in federal prison for possessing child pornographic images he viewed on a National City library computer.
Julio Fernando Martinez, Jr., 37, of National City, was given the term by U.S. District Court Judge Barry Ted Moskowitz in San Diego. The 10-year sentence was the minimum mandatory term with the child porn possession charge to which he pleaded guilty.
Martinez could have received a maximum 20-year term. Moskowitz ordered Martinez to register as a sex offender wherever he lives after he is released from prison. He will be on supervised release conditions to monitor him, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Janet Cabral.
His attorney, Benjamin Davis, described Martinez in court papers as “a child-like, sad-eyed man who has struggled his whole life.” Martinez was born in National City to parents who separated when he was six years old.
Martinez was later abused by his mother’s boyfriend who considered him “slow” and she lost custody of him via Child Protective Services. He went to live with his grandmother, and attended special education classes in elementary and junior high school, wrote Davis.
He dropped out of high school in the ninth grade because he was embarrassed about showing up to school in dirty, smelly clothes, wrote his attorney.
After that, he loved to play video games and worked in a Chinese restaurant. He lived with his father on and off, but sometimes his father lost his housing and both were homeless, according to Davis.
“In his childlike way, he didn’t really understand the actual impact these (child porn) videos had on the victims,” wrote Davis. “After many conversations with counsel, he now understands the horrifying reality of the abuse the images captured, and is deeply remorseful for it.”
Moskowitz ordered forfeiture of Martinez’s cell phone, portable media player, and a memory card which were seized in the library at 1401 National City Boulevard on May 7, 2016. Martinez actually recorded some of the images from the library computer.
Library staff saw Martinez access the sexually explicit images and called National City Police. Computer software is supposed to stop library patrons from accessing any type of pornography on library computers, but Martinez somehow was able to do it.
Court records say Martinez became a registered sex offender because of a previous situation in 2011 with accessing sexually explicit images of minors. The jurisdiction is federal because it affects interstate commerce.
