An imprisoned sex trafficking victim has been granted clemency after her case was highlighted in Kim Kardashian West’s criminal justice reform docu-series.
Kardashian-West’s new documentary series Kim Kardashian West: The Justice Project premiered April 5 on Oxygen; the series follows the reality star’s journey with criminal justice reform and spotlights some of the inmates she has helped. One of the cases documented in the series is Alexis Martin, an imprisoned sex trafficking survivor who was sentenced to life in prison for killing her pimp when she was 15 in Akron, Ohio.
Martin, who is now 22, had her murder sentence commuted Friday by Ohio governor Mike DeWine, according to PEOPLE. A spokesperson for the governor said Martin is now one of seven prisoners to be released amid the coronavirus outbreak.
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Martin was convicted of first-degree murder and robbery charges for allegedly masterminding Angelo Kerney’s 2013 shooting death. The young woman was raped and trafficked by Kerney when she was a teen. In the young woman’s episode, she revealed that she was raped four times, starting at the age of nine and that one of the attackers who raped her from age nine to eleven was not found guilty despite his semen being found in her panties, Daily Mail reports. She was one of seven people involved in the crime, but she did not shoot Kerney. When she turned 17, she started her prison sentence of at least 21 years following the acceptance of a plea deal, the Cincinnati Enquirer reports.
PEOPLE reports that her supervised release requires that she temporarily live in a group home. In a tweet, Kardashian-West thanked DeWine for his efforts. “Alexis Martin is a sex traffic survivor, and I was honored to be able to share her story on the Justice Project. Thank you, Governor DeWine, for commuting her sentence,” said the reality star.
