Convicted Santa Fe rapist gets 11 1/2 -year sentence

Jan. 19—State District Judge T. Glenn Ellington sentenced a Santa Fe man convicted of raping a homeless woman to 11 1/2 years in prison Tuesday, despite the defendant's assertions he'd been wrongly convicted and was framed by a police officer with a racist agenda.

"You see yourself as the victim ... [but] you are a career criminal," the judge told 54-year-old Marlon Henry. "You are also a sexual predator."

Assistant District Attorney Alyssa Cervantes had asked the judge to sentence Henry to more than 25 years in the case, arguing his 40-year criminal history included a pattern of targeting homeless women in hopes they wouldn't report him.

But Henry's attorney Samuel Ruyle argued and the judge agreed the four counts of criminal sexual penetration on which he was convicted were part of a single episode and should combined as a single count. Henry got nine years for rape; the other two and a half years were related to battery charges that included a sentencing enhancement for being a repeat offender.

Henry twice stood trial in the case. His first trial in October 2020 ended in a mistrial after coronavirus and other health issues for the jury delayed deliberations for several weeks. His second trial in September resulted in his conviction.

Henry's victim — who had to be subpoenaed to testify at his trial — testified she'd known Henry when both were on the streets, adding he'd picked her up outside a fast food restaurant and taken her to his home on Cerro Gordo Road. She said he held her against her will and sexually assaulted her throughout the night before scrubbing her to remove any trace of his DNA before they left the home.

She said she was able to escape by jumping out of a vehicle when it stopped and she ran to a hospital.

Henry — who testified during the first trial over the objections of his attorney — said he was the one who ended their intimacy after the woman seemed to not enjoy the encounter, which he said had included but never moved beyond oral sex.

He said he'd suggested she take a shower the next day and helped her wash her hair because she was so disheveled he didn't want his neighbors to see her.

He testified they'd picked up another man at Allsup's, where he'd gone to buy the woman more vodka. Henry said he dropped both of them at a bus stop and never saw them again.

Henry elaborated on that version of events in a lengthy statement to the court Tuesday, saying the other man also was Black and likely had been the perpetrator of the assault. But he also said a Santa Fe police officer with a vendetta against him had seized the opportunity to confuse the victim and manipulate the evidence to make it appear as if Henry committed the crime.

Cervantes said Henry's criminal history spans a period of 40 years and several states, and includes seven previous felony convictions. Henry had a pattern of abusing women and predatory behavior, the prosecutor said, adding the DNA sample taken from him in the course of this case linked him to a 2015 rape in Albuquerque. Charges against him are still pending in that case.

Ellington commented during the hearing that Henry was in some ways an "anomaly" — in that unlike many people who come before the court, Henry was educated and didn't come from a broken home with no family support.

To the contrary, Henry's mother testified by phone her son's middle-class upbringing was "no hard-knock life." He was a child actor who was chosen from 300 hopefuls to appear in an ABC movie and later appeared in a McDonald's commercial.

"At 15 he began on the drug trail and that was that," his mother said, adding her son later was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Henry's mother and his defense attorney asked the court to sentence Henry to probation so he could get the treatment he needed.

Henry has been incarcerated since his arrest in 2018 and has completed every kind of programing the Santa Fe County jail offered without a single disciplinary offense, according to his attorney.

In his statement to the court, Henry noted there were no Blacks on the jury and described the Santa Fe Police Department as an organization "rich with race hatred and police misconduct."

"In no shape way or form can I afford the luxury of ignorance or the acceptance of injustice," he said. "Especially as a Black man in 2022."

Henry told the court he was diagnosed with heart failure and hepatitis C while imprisoned. "I will most likely die in jail," he said.

But Ellington seemed unmoved by Henry's speech.

"I've listened to you blame everyone but yourself," the judge said. "You said some other Black individual was responsible for all of this, but the jury determined you were the person that committed these crimes and that there is no one else."

Dressed in a beige jail jumpsuit and white crocheted skull cap, Henry buried his face in his hands and shook his head as the judge ordered him into the custody of the state Department of Corrections.

Henry intends to appeal his conviction, Ruyle said.

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