A Durango man who said he saw images of himself, his dead wife and demons in the concrete of his jail cell will be sentenced next week for first-degree murder, despite his public defenders’ attempts to have him declared incompetent to proceed against his wishes.
Silvino Martinez-Perez will serve life in prison without a chance for parole after a 12-person jury found him guilty of strangling Crystal Martinez-Perez, his wife, in spring 2017 inside their home at the Lightner Creek Mobile Home Park. He admitted to the murder during a 911 call with dispatchers the night of his wife’s death.
“I just killed my wife,” Martinez-Perez told a dispatcher. “... I grabbed her by the neck and suffocated her or whatever.”
Two certified forensic psychologists who interviewed and assessed Martinez-Perez told District Court Judge Suzanne Carlson on Friday afternoon that they found the defendant did not suffer from a psychological or developmental disorder that would have kept him from cooperating with his attorneys, understanding the trial or appreciating the consequences of a first-degree murder conviction.
Kimberly Muller, a forensic psychologist at Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo, interviewed Martinez-Perez for 2½ hours in 2018. Before she could explain the purpose of the evaluation, Martinez-Perez told her about images of a demonic entity or the devil he saw in the discolored concrete of his jail cell, Muller testified by phone.
Martinez-Perez deciphered the images he saw in the concrete to show the night of his wife’s murder. The devil or demonic entity he saw was either watching or participating in the murder of his wife and intercourse with her body.
In addition to first-degree murder, Martinez-Perez was convicted of three counts of child abuse and abusing a corpse.
Dr. J.W. Ragsdale of Durango, who evaluated Martinez-Perez on June 19, said the defendant’s ideas about the supernatural influencing his actions were retrospective, contrived in his attempt to rationalize what he had done.
“He acknowledged that he choked her – he wasn’t in his right mind and believes that some power or evil had come over him,” Ragsdale testified. “He was struggling with what he did and trying to make sense out of why it happened.”
Martinez-Perez may have exhibited “odd” behavior during his first evaluation, but he has never been diagnosed with a mental health disorder, evaluators testified. He was “abrasive and made provocative statements, but very logical and coherent,” Muller said.
“He had a reasonable range of emotions,” she said. “He didn’t present a flat affect as you see with other mental illness.”
He told evaluators he was frustrated with his public defenders. He felt they were demeaning when they told him they didn’t understand his rationale or believe that he saw the supernatural in his jail cell, Muller said.
Martinez-Perez tried to fire his attorney Jonathan Jourdane in open court in May when the public defender requested a second evaluation after Muller had already found him competent. The defendant said during his second evaluation that he was frustrated with having to do a second evaluation and felt like his attorneys were working against him, Ragsdale testified.
The Durango evaluator said Martinez-Perez has contemplated the consequences of his conviction and requested the judge order a lengthy incarceration or lethal injection.
His sentencing hearing is scheduled for 2 p.m. Tuesday.
bhauff@durangoherald.com
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly spelled the name of Silvino Martinez-Perez.
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