According to officials, three other convicts at a Southern California prison beat a death row inmate to death.
Alberto Martinez was killed Thursday at Calipatria State Prison in Imperial County, according to a news release from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. His death is being investigated as a homicide.
Prison staff watched another convict, Tyler A. Lua, assaulting Martinez and knocking him to the ground before continuing to strike him. Lue eventually moved away from Martinez, but two other convicts, Jorge D. Negrete-Larios and Luis J. Beltran, started beating him while he lay unmoving on the ground.
Staff used pepper spray and a baton strike to stop the beating. Two weapons produced by jailed people were discovered at the spot.
Martinez had injuries consistent with an incarcerated-made weapon. There were no injuries among the personnel or other detainees.
Emergency responders were dispatched to the scene, and medical personnel saved Martinez’s life. He was taken to the prison’s treatment room and pronounced dead around 2:20 p.m.
Movement has been restricted in the yard where the alleged incident occurred.
Lua, Negrete-Larios, and Beltran were placed in restricted housing pending an inquiry into the event.
Martinez, 46, was most recently taken into custody by Orange County on August 17, 2010, and sentenced to death for first-degree murder. He was also sentenced to life in prison with the chance of parole for attempted first-degree murder with an enhancement for street gang participation, as well as two years for street gang activity, which would be served simultaneously with the condemned sentence.
According to the Orange County Register, he served as the getaway driver in a failed kidnapping and murder plan against a businessman. The plot was allegedly orchestrated by the businessman’s sister.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Martinez was a powerful member of a Mexican mafia who plotted killings while on death row and talked with a woman from Mexico via a cellphone that he was not allowed to use.
On January 31, 2019, Lua, 25, was sentenced to 19 years in jail for attempted second-degree murder with an additional for firearm usage. During his detention, he was sentenced to two more years for possessing a controlled narcotic in prison.
On July 5, 2016, Negrete-Larios, 33, was sentenced to 32 years and four months in prison for attempted second-degree murder, with enhancements for causing serious bodily injury, discharge of a firearm, and street gang activity in the commission of a violent felony.
Beltran, 31, was sentenced to life in prison without parole on April 6, 2023, for first-degree murder, with enhancements for deliberate discharge of a handgun resulting in serious bodily damage or death and felon possession of a firearm.
According to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, there are 623 convicts in California prisons serving condemned sentences.
California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, issued an executive order in 2019 suspending the death sentence in the Golden State. The order also called for the state’s lethal injection protocol to be repealed and the San Quentin State Prison execution chamber to be closed immediately.
California’s last execution was carried out in 2006.