The 25-year term followed a guilty plea in Jefferson Smith Cates’ death and another conviction for a jailhouse assault.
OREGON CITY, Ore. — Lynette Brunson told the man who killed her son that she carries Jefferson Smith Cates’ ashes with her every day, moments before the case that began with Cates’ 2024 death ended in a 25-year prison sentence for Eliazar Martinez-Rodriguez.
Martinez-Rodriguez, 35, was sentenced Sept. 15 to 300 months in prison after pleading guilty to first-degree manslaughter in Cates’ death and second-degree assault for attacking another inmate while jailed in the case, according to the Clackamas County District Attorney’s Office. Cates was 30. Prosecutors said Martinez-Rodriguez killed him after learning both men were romantically involved with the same woman. The sentence brought together a homicide that initially reached the public as an unexplained late-night assault and a separate act of violence that happened almost two years later inside the county jail.
Brunson’s statement gave the sentencing a perspective that the first official accounts of the homicide did not contain. “I carry Jefferson’s ashes with me every day, but you carry his blood on your hands,” she told Martinez-Rodriguez, according to prosecutors. She said the loss had affected her physically as well as emotionally, describing recurring nightmares, high blood pressure, a stroke and takotsubo cardiomyopathy, a heart condition sometimes called broken-heart syndrome. Her statement, quoted by the district attorney’s office, emphasized that the consequences of the killing continued long after the criminal investigation moved into court.
The public first learned of Cates’ death after deputies responded to Crown Court Apartments on Southeast 97th Avenue shortly before 1 a.m. on June 22, 2024. Multiple 911 callers reported hearing someone yelling for help, and one caller said a man had been injured, according to local reporting based on the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office. Deputies found a bystander helping an injured man and took over lifesaving efforts. Cates died at the scene. Authorities identified him as a 30-year-old Portland resident, and the medical examiner ruled the death a homicide. No motive was announced in those first reports.
The more detailed account released at sentencing described what prosecutors said happened before the emergency calls. Martinez-Rodriguez had occasionally stayed with a woman who lived at the apartment complex, prosecutors said. He did not know the woman also had been intimate with Cates. At some point, Martinez-Rodriguez learned of that relationship and became angry, according to the district attorney’s office. On the night Cates died, he and the woman returned to her apartment and encountered Martinez-Rodriguez there. The county’s account did not identify the woman, and the public materials reviewed for this report do not indicate that she was accused of wrongdoing.
Prosecutors said Cates became uneasy with Martinez-Rodriguez’s behavior and walked away from the apartment. The confrontation did not end with that departure. Martinez-Rodriguez later found Cates elsewhere in the complex, according to the district attorney’s office, and stabbed him in the heart. Senior Deputy District Attorney Rusty Amos said witnesses reported hearing a scream during the attack. Cates was still able to reach the apartment of an acquaintance, but he died there. The sentencing release described the killing as motivated by jealousy, a characterization that was not part of the public information released immediately after the homicide.
The investigation soon shifted from an unidentified assailant to a criminal case against Martinez-Rodriguez. Reporting from July 2024 said a Clackamas County grand jury indicted him on second-degree murder. The final conviction was different: Martinez-Rodriguez ultimately pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter. The district attorney’s office confirmed that plea when announcing the sentence in September 2026. The materials reviewed for this report do not detail the plea negotiations, identify what evidence prompted the charging change or explain why prosecutors accepted manslaughter rather than take the original murder charge to trial.
Another part of the case predated Cates’ death and became important to Brunson at sentencing. Prosecutors said Martinez-Rodriguez was on supervised release after serving a federal prison sentence on a firearms charge. He had been ordered to reside at the Northwest Regional Re-Entry Center in Portland but violated the conditions of his release by leaving, according to the county. After he was arrested and brought back to federal court, a judge allowed him to remain out of custody and return to the re-entry center. Prosecutors said Cates was killed about a month after that decision.
Brunson told the sentencing court that the federal judge’s decision to allow Martinez-Rodriguez to remain out of custody “literally haunts me.” Her criticism was included in the county’s sentencing release, but the public material reviewed here does not include the judge’s explanation for the decision, the recommendation made by federal authorities or the exact circumstances considered at that hearing. Those missing details matter because the county’s account establishes only that Martinez-Rodriguez had violated supervised release, was returned to court and was permitted to go back to the re-entry center rather than be detained.
By the time the homicide case reached its final stage, Martinez-Rodriguez had committed another offense in custody. Prosecutors said that on May 20, 2026, he attacked a prisoner at the Clackamas County Jail without provocation. The district attorney’s office said he hit the inmate repeatedly in the head and face, leaving the man injured on his back and breathing heavily. The victim was taken by ambulance to a hospital and survived. Martinez-Rodriguez pleaded guilty to second-degree assault for that attack, creating a second conviction to be addressed when he appeared for sentencing in September.
The court imposed 230 months for first-degree manslaughter and 70 months for second-degree assault. Together, the terms totaled 300 months, or 25 years. The sentence therefore punished two separate acts: the June 2024 killing of Cates at the apartment complex and the May 2026 jail assault. The county’s release did not describe a separate future sentencing event or unresolved state charge connected to either act. Senior Deputy District Attorney Rusty Amos and Deputy District Attorney Randi Hall prosecuted the case, which is listed by the district attorney’s office as Clackamas County Circuit Court case 24CR34601.
The final sentence also changed the public meaning of a case that had unfolded in stages. In the first days, the central questions were who had attacked Cates and why. A month later, the case had become a murder prosecution. By 2026, the official account included a jealousy motive, Martinez-Rodriguez’s federal supervised-release history, a second violent offense in jail and guilty pleas to manslaughter and assault. That progression is important because each stage revealed information that had not been public when Cates died, while the final disposition fixed the offenses of conviction and the punishment the court imposed. It also shows why the 25-year total reflects more than the homicide alone: the jail assault became a separate conviction carrying its own 70-month term.
For Brunson, however, the case’s endpoint was not simply a number of months in prison. Her statement at sentencing described a family living with the consequences of Cates’ death more than two years after the killing. The official record now reflects Martinez-Rodriguez’s guilty pleas and 25-year term, while the district attorney’s Sept. 15 release lists no additional hearing in the state case. The sentence closes the prosecution described by Clackamas County, but Brunson’s words made clear that the harm she associated with her son’s death did not end with the judgment.
Author note: Last updated November 6, 2026.