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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2018
Ilwaco man sentenced to 17 years for stabbings
Mental illness,
drug use were
factors in crime
By NATALIE ST. JOHN
Chinook Observer
SOUTH BEND, Wash.
— The Ilwaco resident who
stabbed three men in April will
spend 17 years in state prison.
At a hearing last week
in Pacific County Superior
Court, Mitchell Marteeny, 51,
pleaded guilty to two counts
of first-degree assault with a
deadly weapon and one count
of second-degree assault with
a deadly weapon.
The plea came after Mar-
teeny spent several weeks
undergoing treatment and
evaluation for his mental ill-
ness. During the hearing, Mar-
teeny was polite and respon-
sive, but signs of the delusions
that led him to attack his neigh-
bors still lingered.
Marteeny was arrested in
an Ilwaco apartment complex
in April after he attempted to
set his neighbor’s car on fire,
then stabbed him. He also
stabbed two men who tried
to intervene. All of the men
recovered from their injuries,
but police said Marteeny could
easily have killed them.
Marteeny attacked the men
because he believed his neigh-
bor was holding women hos-
tage and raping them. Police
paid numerous visits to Mar-
teeny’s residence in the months
before the stabbing. They
never found any evidence that
the neighbors were breaking
the law, but Marteeny’s behav-
ior continued to escalate.
In early June, the court
ordered Marteeny to spend up
to 90 days at Yakima Com-
petency Restoration Center.
The state-run facility serves
mentally ill defendants who
are not able to understand the
nature of the court proceedings
or to participate in their own
Oregon clears
backlog of more
than 5,000 rape kits
Testing has led
to convictions
By CONRAD WILSON
Oregon Public
Broadcasting
Oregon has cleared
its backlog of more than
5,000 rape kits, state police
announced.
In 2015, Oregon State
Police released an audit
that found 4,700 rape kits
had not been tested. The
Portland Police Bureau
possessed more than half
of them.
That same year, the
Multnomah County dis-
trict attorney received a $2
million grant to test rape
kits in Marion, Multnomah
and Lane counties. Kits
from 2014 and earlier were
tested at a forensic lab in
Utah.
In 2016, the Legislature
passed “Melissa’s Law” —
named for Melissa Bitler,
a 14-year-old who was
raped and murdered in
2001 — and helped expose
the backlog of thousands
of tests.
The legislation required
law enforcement agencies
to develop their own pol-
icies for how to process
untested sexual assault
kits.
It also added staff and
resources at the state
crime lab to process the
kits.
“Statewide we’re at full
submission,” said Amity
Girt, Multnomah County
deputy district attorney
who oversees sex crimes
convictions.
“Everyone
hopes that there won’t be
another backlog.”
By testing backlogged
kits for DNA, prosecu-
tors in Multnomah County
won four convictions.
Testing also has resulted
in two additional indict-
ments. Prosecutors in Lane
County also won a convic-
tion related to the testing.
“We would antici-
pate there would be future
indictments,” Girt said.
“It’s going to continue to
be a process.”
Kits sent to Utah were
mostly tested for male
DNA on evidence, includ-
ing underwear. Results
ranged from no DNA to
strong samples.
“Say they do get good
results, that data goes to
the OSP Forensic Labora-
tory,” Susan Hormann, a
former DNA supervisor at
OSP’s lab who was hired
by Multnomah County to
help clear the backlog, said
in an interview last year.
From there, the data
was entered into the
FBI’s
national
DNA
database.
“They’re able to search
this evidence profile that
we have from this sex-
ual assault kit against all
the offenders across the
United States and all the
evidence profiles across
the United States,” Hor-
mann said.
The hope is that the
new evidence matches evi-
dence from another case or
a known offender.
Though thousands of
kits have been tested in
Oregon, most didn’t pro-
vide
useful
informa-
tion or include any DNA
evidence.
Still,
others
have
resulted in several hun-
dred new entries into the
FBI’s DNA database and
more than 100 matches
to evidence in other
cases or to other known
offenders.
Chinook Observer
An Ilwaco man involved in stabbings last April was sen-
tenced to 17 years in prison.
defense. Residents are treated
with medications and classes,
then re-evaluated.
When Marteeny arrived in
late June, he was cooperative,
but still insisted he was a vic-
tim rather than the perpetrator
in the case and described hav-
ing auditory hallucinations.
A psychiatrist re-evaluated
Marteeny in late August after
he reported no longer believ-
ing he was a victim.
Marteeny told the psy-
chiatrist his depression and
other mental health problems
intensified after his wife’s
death, about one-and-a-half
years before the stabbing. He
acknowledged using large
amounts of hallucinogens in
his youth, and going through
periods of intense metham-
phetamine use over the past 30
years. He said his meth con-
sumption around the time of
the attack contributed to his
worsening mental health.
The psychiatrist concluded
Marteeny suffered from para-
noid beliefs, “odd social behav-
iors” and other symptoms pos-
sibly caused by schizophrenia
or another type of delusion-in-
ducing disorder. However, he
said, it appeared that Martee-
ny’s symptoms clearly wors-
ened when he smoked meth
and seemed to diminish when
he was sober. He determined
Marteeny was able to partici-
pate in his legal case.
In court, Marteeny sat pas-
sively in his chair as his attor-
ney, Harold Karlsvik, dis-
cussed his client’s progress
under treatment.
“Mr. Marteeny is a changed
person to the person I was
originally assigned to,” Karls-
vik said. “He is thinking ratio-
nally about this case.”
Marteeny appeared confi-
dent and lucid as he answered
Superior Court Judge Doug
Goelz’s questions. However,
the defendant did not express
remorse when Goelz asked if
he wanted to say anything.
“I plead for mercy,” Mar-
teeny replied, smiling.
“I read your file before
court this morning and I can’t
put the two together,” Goelz
told Marteeny. “I can’t put
the chaos and evil that was in
your mind on the day of the
offenses and the person I see
in court.”
Marteeny revealed that he
was still not totally in touch
with reality when he told Goelz
his attack “was self-defense.”
Goelz told him it was import-
ant for him to take responsibil-
ity for his actions.
“I am,” Marteeny said.
Goelz said he believed Mar-
teeny understood the serious-
ness of his crimes, but still
deserved a tough punishment.
“I think the 204 (months),
along with your age make that
a very serious sentence for
you. I think it’s appropriate,”
Goelz said.
Feds say heroin, fentanyl remain biggest drug threat
Overdoses at
record high
By MICHAEL BALSAMO
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Drug
overdose deaths hit the high-
est level ever recorded in the
United States last year, with
an estimated 200 people dying
per day, according to a report
by the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration. Most of that
was the result of a record num-
ber of opioid-related deaths.
Preliminary figures show
more than 72,000 people
died in 2017 from drug over-
doses across the country.
About a week ago, U.S. Health
and Human Services Secre-
tary Alex Azar said overdose
deaths, while still slowly ris-
ing, were beginning to level
off, citing figures from late last
year and early this year.
The DEA’s National Drug
Threat Assessment, which was
released today, shows that her-
oin, fentanyl and other opioids
continue to be the highest drug
threat in the nation.
But federal officials are
concerned that methamphet-
amine and cocaine are being
seen at much higher levels in
areas that haven’t historically
been hotspots for those drugs.
The DEA is also worried
that people are exploiting mar-
ijuana legalization to traffic
cannabis into the illicit mar-
ket or to states that don’t have
medicinal or recreational-use
marijuana laws, according to
the report.
The preliminary data also
showed 49,060 people died
from opioid-related overdose
deaths, a rise from the reported
42,249 opioid overdose deaths
in 2016.
AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
Health and Human Ser-
vices
Secretary
Alex
Azar speaks on Capitol
Hill in Washington, D.C.,
in June.
President Donald Trump
has declared the U.S. opi-
oid crisis as a “public health
emergency” and just last week
pledged to put an “extremely
big dent” in the scourge of
drug addiction.
Fatal heroin overdoses rose
nationwide between 2015 and
2016, with a nearly 25 percent
increase in the Northeast and
more than 22 percent in the
South. Most of the heroin sold
in the U.S. is being trafficked
from Mexico, and U.S. Cus-
toms and Border Protection
officers seize the most amount
of heroin along the Mexico
border, near San Diego, Cali-
fornia, the report said.
Fentanyl and other related
opioids, which tend to be
cheaper and much more potent
than heroin, remain one of the
biggest concerns for federal
drug agents.
The DEA has said China is
a main source of fentanyl and
other synthetic opioids that
have been flooding the U.S.
market. China has pushed back
against the characterization,
and U.S. officials have stressed
they work closely with their
Chinese counterparts as they
try to stem the flow of drugs.
Legislation that Trump
signed last week will add treat-
ment options and force the U.S.
Postal Service to screen over-
seas packages for fentanyl.
Azar said in a speech last
week that toward the end of
2017 and through the begin-
ning of this year the num-
ber of drug overdose deaths
“has begun to plateau.” How-
ever, he was not indicating that
deaths were going down, but
that they appear to be rising at
a slower rate than previously
seen.
Last month, the Centers
for Disease Control and Pre-
vention released preliminary
figures that appear to show a
slowdown in overdose deaths
from December to March. In
that period, the figures show
that the pace of the increase
over the previous 12 months
has slowed from 10 percent to
3 percent, according to the pre-
liminary CDC figures.
Even if a slowdown is
underway, no one is question-
ing the fact that the nation is
dealing with the deadliest drug
overdose epidemic in its his-
tory. While prescription opioid
and heroin deaths appear to be
leveling off, deaths involving
fentanyl, cocaine and meth-
amphetamines are on the rise,
according to CDC data.
The DEA’s report also
noted that methamphetamine
is making its way into commu-
nities where the drug normally
wasn’t heavily used, the report
said. Chronic use of meth, a
highly addictive stimulant,
can cause paranoia, visual and
auditory hallucinations and
delusions, studies have shown.
As the government enacted
laws that limited access to cold
medicines containing pseu-
doephedrine — the ingredi-
ent used to cook meth with
other household chemicals —
or required the medications
to be placed behind pharmacy
counters, officials discovered
the number of meth labs began
to drop.
But the DEA has found the
gap is being filled by Mexican
and Latin American drug car-
tels that had primarily dabbled
in heroin and cocaine traffick-
ing. A saturated market on the
West Coast is now driving the
cartels to peddle methamphet-
amine into the Northeast, using
the same routes they use for
heroin and other drugs.
Officials also warn that
because of more cocaine pro-
duction in South American
countries, including Colombia,
they expect to see larger ship-
ments at the Mexican border.
Associated Press writer
Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar con-
tributed to this report.
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