The Independent has prosecuted a number of criminal cases in the Navajo County Superior Court and provides an update on three of them below.
HOLBROOK – Kareem Jahmal Martin, 37, of Charlotte, North Carolina, pleaded guilty to grievous bodily harm in the Navajo County Superior Court on July 6 and will serve five years in prison. The plea agreement identifies the victim by initials only, and in it Martin admitted that he ruthlessly inflicted injury to that person while using a deadly weapon or dangerous instrument. This particular type of Class 3 crime, if not classified as “dangerous or repetitive”, carries a prison sentence of between two and eight and three quarters of a year.
The case began on September 30, 2020 when soldiers from the Arizona Department of Public Safety received a report about a man brandishing a gun at a gas station in Gallup, New Mexico, and the man was apparently on his way to Arizona. Shortly thereafter, DPS was contacted with reports that a driver of a white Dodge car with a blue stripe shot at vehicles on I-40 in Navajo County.
During the investigation, authorities received a report from a truck driver with a gunshot wound in the driver’s leg. The bullet apparently landed in and through the passenger door of the articulated lorry before it hit the driver. Two other vehicles were also hit: a second semi-trailer truck with three occupants and a minivan with two occupants, all of which were reportedly traveling on the freeway. In the other two vehicles, none of the occupants was hit. One of the victims is said to be a police vacationer.
The victims were able to provide a description of the shooter and the car. The next day, DPS soldiers found a car that matched the description given near Winslow and Martin was located nearby and arrested without incident. Apparently the vehicle was reported stolen from Georgia. As I said, Martin is from North Carolina.
It’s unclear whether authorities suspect Martin was the man reportedly brandishing a gun in Gallup, but he has been charged with a number of criminal offenses, including three other cases of aggravated assault, vehicle theft, identity theft and gun possession when prohibited it’s so. He is also said to have been parole when he committed this new crime, and that parole is likely the reason Martin was allegedly a banned gun owner. These other charges, as well as penalty-increasing allegations that the offense was dangerous or repetitive, will be dismissed or not formally brought forward by the prosecution in accordance with the agreement.
Martin has been in prison since his arrest and counts towards the time already served.
The verdict is scheduled for July 29th.
Floyd Trevor Michael Hueston
LAKESIDE – Navajo County Sheriff’s detectives arrested Lakeside’s Floyd Trevor Michael Hueston, 25, on 30 crimes against children, including abduction and child abuse on May 8th. Since then, a Navajo County grand jury has dismissed their charges of 23 cases of sexual conduct, including a minor, class 2 crimes, kidnapping in three cases (withholding persons for sexual purposes) class 2 crimes, child abuse in two cases, class 2 crimes and sexual abuse in two cases, Class 3 crimes – 30 charges in all.
Significantly, the crimes are charged as “dangerous crimes against children,” which under Arizona law raises the gravity of the alleged crimes to the stratosphere. For example, if a jury unanimously determines that a class 2 crime has been committed and it is indeed a dangerous crime against children, the prison sentence will increase depending on the age of the victim. The age of the alleged victim (s) is not listed in the public court records in this case, but based on the class of crime charged, a class 2 in this case, the sexual conduct charges apply to a victim who is under the age of 15 years. As far as punishment is concerned, a conviction can range from a minimum of 13 years to a maximum of 27 years per offense.
Hueston is considered innocent by law. His request for release pending trial was heard on July 13 before Judge Pro Tem Warren Granville, a retired Maricopa County Supreme Court Justice. Granville denied Hueston’s request for release. His next court date is a case management conference on August 19th.
Show Low’s Kenly Ries has spent a lot of time in court in recent years and was sentenced to three years’ hard probation on July 1st. The verdict came after Ries pleaded guilty to an April 16 indictment of endangerment, an undisclosed class 6 crime, under the plea agreement. An undisclosed crime is one that can be classified as an offense if the accused successfully completes a probationary period. The indictment arose out of Ries allowing a friend who had been drinking to bring both Ries and a minor back from Greer in February 2020 after a ski trip last winter.
The settlement that enables Ries to plead guilty of an “unnamed” crime is similar to the way he resolved a previous crime charge from an October 2018 case. In the old case, Ries admitted that he tried to suffocate the mother of his four children, a class 5 felon. To settle the charges in the old case, Ries was found guilty of the misdemeanor on plea of misconduct, and despite pleading guilty of the crime, an agreement was reached whereby the charge would be dismissed for successfully completing a three-year probationary period in total. One of the terms of this probation was that Ries did not consume alcohol.
But after Ries’s friend was arrested on a ski trip, it was revealed that Ries had also been drinking alcohol, and prosecutors moved to lift his probationary period on the old case. The suspended parole case has been settled and the conviction for class 5 offenses has been formally filed against him.
This, of course, affected his license as a professional chiropractor. The Arizona Board of Chiropractic Examiners can revoke a medical doctor’s license after conviction of a felony, but it did not in Ries’ case. Revocation is not required by regulations, and Ries ‘attorney, David G. Derickson of David G. Derickson, PC, was open to the board during a March 31 hearing informing them of Ries’ conviction. The board noted that Ries has no complaints about his chiropractor services and discussed that Ries can successfully complete probation to address the potential admission issue, according to the audiotape of the hearing.
Meanwhile, the mother and victim of the attempted grievous bodily harm has sued Ries for damages because of the incident in October 2018. This civil case is pending, according to court records, but nothing has happened in the case since February. When this case is resolved, Kenly Ries will have finally overcome these years of legal problems.
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