Due to Transportation Code Section 730.010, thumb prints on driver records are now not able to be disclosed, even for prosecution purposes, it appears.

I just received a certified driving record with the thumb prints covered up. I know that a lot of us may rely on these prints to prove up prior DWI's when the old DWI judgment doesn't have a print.

730.010 says that the prints can be disclosed if "authorized by law." So, all you DWI gurus out there (Richard Alpert, Warren Diepraam), any ideas?

That's just silly. How about issuing a court-ordered subpoena for a DPS clerk to appear with it in court?

And how about proving up a defendant's criminal history through his body tatoos? Read on:

Killer's 1-word creed: violence

Fearing he'll kill again, dreading a prison life, Alex Martinez is ready to be executed

By ALLAN TURNER
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

LIVINGSTON - The blue prison tattoos on Alex Martinez's arms and torso, as intense in imagery as anything on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, tell the story of his life. Somewhere, surely, are references to his wretched childhood, the endless beatings and psychological abuse.

But it's the tombstones, macabre tributes to the women whose throats he slashed, that are most chilling.

"Maria," reads one, referring to Maria Martinez, the stepmother who miraculously survived his brutal attack in August 2001. "To be continued."

The second cuts to the heart of what brought the 28-year-old one-time Houston fast-food worker to death row. Beneath the inscription, "RIP," are a date, a woman's name and the sum, "$300." Seemingly cryptic, the tattoo is a crude ink-and-skin memorial to South Houston prostitute Helen Joyce Oliveros, who, on Aug. 12, 2001, was murdered by Martinez during a squabble over her fee.

Martinez admitted that the slashings, just weeks after he was freed from prison where he served a sentence for attempted murder, might seem extreme responses to minor provocations � unless one believes in violence.

"Yeah, I believe in violence," said Martinez, who is scheduled to be executed Tuesday and become the ninth killer to die in the state's Huntsville death house this year. "I was raised up with violence. I was hit, kicked, hollered at. It destroyed my family. Even in here (prison) I'm subject to violence. Even the state will be violent when I'm killed."

Partly out of fear that he will kill again, partly out of dread of spending his life behind bars, Martinez said in a recent death row interview that he wants to die. To the consternation of his appeals attorney, Houston lawyer Pat McCann, the killer has insisted that all efforts to save his life be halted.

"I think Alexander's life still has value," he said. "I wish he would change his mind."

McCann thinks a key element of the prosecution's case � testimony by his client's Harris County cellmate, Cesar Rios � is faulty.

"This is a case that never should have been a capital case to start with," McCann said. "A lying jailhouse snitch was one of the key elements in making a murder case a capital case. ... If Alexander dies, he'd be dying for a lie. That's not justice."

In rejecting Martinez's initial, automatic appeal in March 2004, however, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals found that other evidence was "consistent with and corroborated" Rios' testimony. Evidence also supported the accuracy of three confessions Martinez gave investigators after his arrest.

"He's one of the scariest people I've encountered across the table," said Assistant District Attorney Tammy Thomas, lead Harris County prosecutor in the case. "He seems to enjoy the kill. That's pretty apparent from the trial transcript. He's not sorry."

"He is among the most dangerous individuals this forensic psychiatrist has evaluated," Dr. Seth Silverman wrote after examining Martinez to determine his competency to waive appeals.

"He has taken pride in his short temper and proclivity to extreme violence. The violence has escalated through his life, including during his incarceration. ... Mr. Martinez's decision to refuse his death penalty appeal is a logical extension of his lifelong disrespect of his own, as well as others' physical well-being."

Martinez, in the death row interview, affirmed that he likely would kill again.

"Maybe not now," he said, "maybe not in 10 years. But someday, maybe 20 years from now, somebody would set me off. I give my life freely."

Psychologist Carmen Petzold found that Martinez suffered from "numerous disorders," possibly stemming from his hellish childhood. Born to a heroin addict, Martinez was placed for adoption with a family in which he was verbally, physically and, he claimed, sexually abused by his new mother. Martinez told officials he was "beaten every night until my mother's hands hurt and she had to stop."

'His life just fell apart'

Martinez's adoptive mother, Velma Griffin, who raised the child from 15 months to nine years, when her marriage ended in divorce, denied all the abuse allegations. Today, she prays for him and hopes his life will be spared. She routinely attempts to visit him on death row, though on each occasion he has rebuffed her, silently returning to his cell when he determines the identity of his visitor.
"I feel very sad," she said. "I cry all the way home. I have to sit in the car five to 10 minutes to compose myself. I just wanted him to know that somebody loves him."

Griffin said Martinez's early years showed promise � as a Boy Scout he was selected to address the Texas Senate. But after the divorce, when she gave up custody of her four children to her ex-husband, "his life just fell apart."

Martinez said the situation hardly improved when his adoptive father remarried. His stepmother, he asserted, intensely disliked him and worked to alienate his father.

"She wouldn't do anything," he said. "She'd wait until my dad came home, and he'd hit me hard."

Martinez's father, stepmother and siblings could not be located for comment.

By the time Martinez dropped out of the ninth grade, he was a steady inhaler of spray paint fumes and similar substances. His adolescence and young adulthood were marked by continual violent skirmishes � only during three years was he free of the criminal-justice system, records show.

"I always looked at it like everybody owed me something," Martinez said. "My mentality was not giving a damn. I couldn't see myself in the world for some reason. I was mad all the time. ... I always thought that I could go right someday. I always thought that things would work out for the best. And all the time I was getting further in the hole."

Deadly trail

In 1994, he stabbed a co-worker during an altercation at the pizza restaurant at which they worked, resulting in a seven-year sentence for attempted murder. He had been out of prison three weeks when he murdered Oliveros, a 45-year-old prostitute with a history of narcotics offenses.
Martinez said he contacted the escort service for which Oliveros worked. When Oliveros arrived at Martinez's home � he was staying at Griffin's residence � the two quarreled over the woman's $300 fee.

In three statements to police, Martinez acknowledged that he had sex with the woman, then killed her. In one, he admitted that he had taken money and cocaine from her belongings. Martinez's county cellmate, Rios, who received a reduced sentence for his testimony, told jurors the killer told him he had placed a knife to the woman's throat as she gathered her things to leave, engaged in sex, forced the knife into her throat, then, to silence her, slashed her throat.

He then placed the corpse in a bedroom closet, retrieving it three days later to dump it in a nearby vacant lot.

Prosecutors told jurors that to find Martinez guilty of capital murder they could accept that he had robbed and/or sexually assaulted his victim. It was not necessary that jurors agree on which felony he committed. The court of criminal appeals upheld prosecutors' interpretation of the law.

In his death row interview, Martinez said he took money and drugs in the incident, but the theft was an afterthought, not a motivating factor. He indicated the couple had engaged in consensual sex.

Residents of a well-kept South Houston neighborhood, where Oliveros apparently lived with her parents, now deceased, would not comment on the victim's descent into drug abuse and prostitution.

'Condemned forever'

On Aug. 23, 2001, Martinez slashed his stepmother's throat in an unprovoked attack as his 8-year-old half-brother and 12-year-old half-sister watched. The injured woman survived after spending nine days in the hospital, five of them in intensive care. Martinez was arrested later the same day after he confided his crimes to a relative in La Porte, who notified police.
When police searched Martinez's bedroom the next day, they found blood on the bed frame, wall, floor, closet shelves and door. Some of the blood, said Assistant District Attorney Marie Munier, was from Oliveros, some from Martinez. Because of irregularities the Houston Police Department's crime lab, the blood samples were tested a second time with the same results, she said.

Behind bars, Martinez seethed.

He demanded to be housed "with my people," members of the violent Mexican Mafia prison gang.

He denounced those who might have been sympathetic to him, notably the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, for failing to adequately champion his case.

And he wrote a letter to his adoptive mother:

"I have not decided what discipline I will give you, but it will be severe," he said in the missive. " ... Wherever you go, I'll find you. I pray you go straight to hell when you die because when I meet you there, I will torture you for eternity, just as I am condemned forever."

As JB says, in proving id, think outside the box. Is Mommy in the gallery? Tattoos, the prosecutor on the former case, the detective who worked it...all of these can work so long as the witness has the personal knowledge. Did the hometown paper print a list of people convicted that week? Jail book-in sheets will often have admissions from the defendant about criminal history.

Because so many other states use Judge-only sentencing with PSIs, the foreign judgments often lack prints. You can fly in the detective who worked the prior up to link the D to the judgment. The are any number of ways to skin a cat.

[This message was edited by BLeonard on 06-04-05 at .]

Here's a tatoo story. Defendant with several pen trips in early 70's. Prints were no good, but every pen pack mentioned tatoos, one in particular - a playboy bunny on his penis. Defense attorney couldn't understand why the judge ordered defendant into men's room to drop trou. When he did he decided to stipulate to the priors. He explained that he got the tatoo on his first pen trip. (ouch!)