Martinez said he spends a lot of time listening to the radio. A psychologist on local Spanish-language radio has helped him through rough emotional patches, but he frequently relives the night disaster befell him, he said.
He was bicycling home after work and took a shortcut down an alley, he said. Unfortunately, he chose a time when two officers were questioning a man they suspected of selling drugs, he said.
"They saw me and assumed I was part of it too," he said.
Patting Martinez down, an officer grabbed the knife Martinez used for working in the strawberry fields. At that point, police said, he tried to snatch the officer's gun. The five shots quickly followed. Martinez's attorneys acknowledged that he panicked during the frisking but that he never made a move for the gun.
"All I wanted to do was work, make a few dollars, and maybe build a house for my mother in Mexico," he said. For years, he said, he had sent money home for his seven siblings.
He had long since fallen out of touch with his daughter, who now is 13. But he said he had hoped to marry and raise a family.
"Yes," he said. "I had that illusion."
Against a bleak backdrop, Martinez has some hope. Four years ago, he dialed a wrong number on a borrowed cell phone. That accident put him in touch with Marta Ramos, 36, who has been his girlfriend ever since.
Ramos, a shy woman with a broad smile, sells tamales to restaurants. She lives in a trailer at a friend's place but hopes sometime to live with Martinez in better surroundings.
Celebrating his father's birthday, Martinez planned to go out with Ramos tonight, perhaps for seafood.
She will give Martinez's father a shirt and a pair of pants. Martinez will give him the only gift he said he could afford -- a hug.
*
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Excerpts From the Court Decision
Justice Clarence Thomas, in the lead opinion:
[Oliverio] Martinez was never made to be a "witness" against himself in violation of the 5th Amendment's Self-Incrimination Clause because his statements were never admitted as testimony against him in a criminal case.
Nor was he ever placed under oath and exposed to "the cruel trilemma of self-accusation, perjury or contempt." ... The text of the Self-Incrimination Clause simply cannot support the 9th Circuit's view that the mere use of compulsive questioning, without more, violates the Constitution....
