Sydney Huffman, a
former Colorado Springs cop guilty of making up false rape charges, among
others, against her ex-boyfriend.
“I consider you to be a total fabricator,” The judge told Huffman
before he delivered her sentence. “This is a crime, simple as it can be. You
are guilty of it.”
Huffman, who was charged with six counts of attempting to
influence a public official, pleaded guilty to just one felony count in April.
All charges stemmed from her repeated attempts to obtain arrest warrants
against Jarrott Martinez, a former Manitou Springs police officer, a former
boyfriend. On Monday, Schwartz sentenced Huffman to 90 days of house arrest,
200 hours of community service and four-years of supervised probation. He also
ordered her to have a mental health evaluation.
She deserved worse, Schwartz said in his cutting and blunt
comments that wrapped up two years of litigation and back-and-forth between
Huffman and Martinez.“If I had the opportunity it would be outright jail,”
Schwartz said, before dismissing the case.
Schwartz was particularly baffled by Huffman’s request to
rescind her guilty plea from late April, yet another twist in a seemingly
endless saga of recanting. Karen Stinehauser, Huffman’s Denver-based lawyer,
said on Monday that Huffman “only entered her plea because she was concerned
about her pregnancy,” not necessarily because she was guilty. Doctors declared
the pregnancy high-risk and Huffman feared a miscarriage, her lawyer said in
April.
“I have never had anybody quite in the position of admitting
they committed a felony offense and literally in the next breath say, ‘well
that didn’t happen,’” said Schwartz.
Ultimately, Schwartz decided not to discard the guilty plea.
The series of cases involving Martinez and Huffman began in
2011, when Huffman reported him for domestic violence abuse, charges later
proven false. It was the first of four cases brought about by false charges
from Huffman that landed Martinez in jail for seven months, as well as cost him
his job as a police officer.
Huffman, now 25, was a 17 years old foster child when she
met Martinez. She regularly spoke with social workers and first reported
Martinez’s alleged physical abuse to them, Stinehauser said. Later, at the
Colorado Springs Police Academy, Huffman showed up to training classes with
bruises and burns, but was “coy” with fellow officers when it came to offering details,
said prosecutor Amy Fitch.
Then, by all accounts, Huffman embarked on a two-year
crusade against Martinez Martinez was often out of town or with his financee.
during the times when Huffman claimed he had raped her, choked or burned her
with a curling iron.
While Stinehauser did not defend Huffman’s lies, she tried
to paint Huffman as avictim of domestic violence who was nearly coerced by
fellow police officers into reporting the alleged abuse – except, Huffman
exaggerated. Exaggerating physical abuse, and lying about the abuse, are
typical of some “battered women,” said expert witness Barbara Shaw during
testimony on Monday.
Schwartz didn’t buy it.
“I am used to hearing recanting victims,” Schwartz told
Huffman and her attorney. “The one thing in my experience that I’ve never seen,
is that somebody doesn’t recant, but they make up a new story that can be
disproved.”
