Judge rejects bid to reduce sentence in 2015 double slaying

On March 7, 2015, one day after her 17th birthday, Ashlee A. Martinson killed her mother and stepfather in the family’s Town of Piehl home.
According to court records, she fired two shots at Thomas Ayers and stabbed Jennifer Ayers more than 30 times. It took more than a year for her case — she was originally charged with two counts of first degree intentional homicide and three counts of false imprisonment for locking her three younger siblings in a room — to be resolved.
In June 2016, after she pled guilty to two counts of second-degree intentional homicide, former Oneida County circuit judge Mike Bloom sentenced her to 23 years confinement in the state prison system to be followed by 17 years extended supervision.
She filed an appeal but the third court of appeals upheld her sentence in a 2019 ruling.
In late May, Martinson sent a letter to the Oneida County Clerk of Court’s office seeking information as to who was presiding over her case since Bloom’s retirement in July 2024 after 12 years on the bench.
Less than two weeks later, representing herself, she filed a motion to vacate, set aside or modify her sentence.
As her attorney did at sentencing, Martinson’s motion focused heavily on her age at the time the crime was committed and the constant abuse she suffered at the hands of various adults starting from the age of 8. She was “neglected and abused by every parental figure” in her life and her mother failed to protect her from “sexually abusive and violent men.”
As for the events of March 7, 2015, she claimed she took her stepfather’s life after making a split decision not to take her own and stabbed her mother in response to an attack.
There was no premeditation except to take her own life, she wrote.
“Both deaths happened spontaneously in a fit of impulsive rage within moments of each other,” she added.
“I’m not a bad person,” she wrote. “I was an abused girl in a horrible situation because my mother failed to protect me. I reacted.”
Now 27, Martinson also wrote at length about the progress she’s made while participating in programming while confined at the Taycheedah Correctional Institution.
“I am no longer that sexually abused, physically beaten down child I was so many years ago,” she wrote. “ I am now a compassionate, resilient, loving woman. I am begging for one more chance to prove it to the courts, my community, my sisters and the world.”
On Sept. 3, Judge Mary Sowinski, who was elected to succeed Bloom, denied Martinson’s motion.
“Unfortunately for Ms. Martinson, at this time there is no authority in the law known to this court that would allow this court to grant this specific request,” Sowinski wrote. “None of the facts cited in the motion are a new factor that would serve as a basis for an amendment to the sentence. In addition, because Ms. Martinson pursued an appeal of her original conviction, she has limited legal options for filing a sentence modification request. Accordingly, the motion is denied.”
According to Department of Corrections records, Martinson will be released to extended supervision on Feb. 28, 2038.