Victim's family wants to testify at sentencing

SALISBURY, N.C. -- A man accused of causing a crash that killed a woman who was eight months pregnant has now been convicted of second degree murder, driving while impaired, and hit and run.

Family members of the victim, 20-year-old Leeanna Newman, have spent the last seven months looking for justice after Leeanna’s death.

They’ve been to Raleigh to fight for the rights of Leeanna’s unborn child and they’ve been in court all week watching this trial. Wednesday they told me they felt sick as they waited for the jury to deliberate.

"We the jury unanimously find the defendant… guilty of second degree murder by vehicle," the Rowan County Clerk read from the jury’s verdict sheet.

As the verdict was read aloud in court, family members of Leeanna Newman erupted in tears.

For several hours they had been replaying the defense attorney's closing arguments in their minds.

Martinez’s attorney Carlyle Sherrill said, "It's not murder, it's an accident."

Leeanna’s mother Bobbie Easley says “Well, there was times that I’d like to go up there and hit him, but I knew I couldn’t so I just sit back and watched him sit up there because he acted like nothing was going on.”

She went on to say, “It’s just going to take time and time for us to get over this.”

Earlier that morning the court heard testimony from a State Investigator who said that Martinez's blood alcohol content was .27 - three times the legal limit - two and a half hours after the crash.

In his closing arguments, prosecutor Bill Kennerly told jurors that if Martinez was too drunk to know what he was doing behind the wheel of a car, that's no excuse for what he did.

"It's not he's too drunk to know he's supposed to stop - that's the crime,” Kennerly said.

Martinez faces more than 30 years in prison for the three convictions.

Some of Leeanna’s family plans to testify during the sentencing directly to Martinez. They want him to know of the dreams they say his actions stole from Leeanna.

“She said her mom was her hero and that she only hoped she could be as good a mom raising her children the way her mom had raised her,” says Leeanna’s aunt, Jeanette Bentley.

The judge is expected to decide Martinez’s sentence Thursday morning.

Under state law, Martinez could not be charged in the death of Leeanna’s unborn child Bianca Cheyenne.

The family is still pursuing the Unborn Victims of Violence Act in Raleigh in hopes of changing that for other families in the future.