MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. — Former Miami-Dade Commissioner Joe Martinez was sentenced Monday after he was convicted last November on two felony charges of unlawful compensation.
Martinez was sentenced to 34 and a half months -- nearly three years -- in state prison.
But he did not report to prison on Monday as his legal team appealed the sentence. Martinez paid the standard $15,000 bond.
“This case has so many legal issues that bond pending appeal is appropriate,” Martinez’s attorney told reporters after the hearing.
At a press conference right after the judge made the sentencing ruling, Martinez’s attorney told reporters that the basis of the appeal will be on the legality of the evidence introduced to the jury.
But he did not specify which key pieces of evidence he believed the state introduced that he’d be poking holes into.
Meanwhile, Martinez is still professing his innocence and standing by his decision to not plead guilty, which would have allowed him to avoid jail time altogether.
“I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror, I couldn’t look at my children, my friends, my supporters, and stand there and say, ‘Yes, I am guilty of this,’ when I didn’t do it,” he said. “And you either understand it or you don’t.”
During the trial, the state argued Martinez took $15,000 in exchange for creating new legislation to help the owner of Extra Supermarket and its landlord with code violations.
During closing arguments, prosecutors said the fact that the money stopped coming in as soon as the ordinance failed to pass shows that it was a quid-pro-quo. Defense attorneys have argued that it was a private transaction with someone the former commissioner has known for years.
Out of a potential 20-year sentence, the state had asked for the minimum, 34-and-a-half months in state prison.
During a hearing last month, his attorneys said they wanted a downward departure: a withhold of adjudication, no formal conviction and much less prison time.
Attorneys for Martinez said last month that no matter what the sentence ended up being, they would continue to fight the jury’s guilty verdicts.
An appeal hearing has been scheduled for Sept. 21, 2026.
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