OLYMPIA, Wash. — Sam Martinez’s parents are back in Olympia pushing for an anti-hazing law that would increase potential punishments for the crime.
The 19-year-old died from alcohol poisoning in 2019.
Police blamed Martinez's death on hazing during an event at a Washington State University fraternity, Alpha Tau Omega.
“When they told me, ‘Your son is dead,’ I thought my life ended,” father Hector Martinez told state senators during a Law and Justice committee hearing Monday morning.
Last year Hector Martinez and Sam’s mother, Jolayne Houtz, got a law passed requiring college organizations to document and disclose past hazing incidents.
They’ve returned to the state Capitol to try and strengthen the state’s hazing laws.
The Sam Martinez Stop Hazing Law would make hazing a gross misdemeanor, instead of a lower-level misdemeanor.
In incidents where someone is killed or suffers “substantial bodily harm,” hazing could be charged as a felony.
“What is the message we send to those who would haze our young people when a young man dies and the consequences are so laughable?” Houtz asked legislators.
House Bill 1002 passed unanimously, 96-0 off the floor of the House March 1.
Monday marked the first step in the process for the bill in the Senate.
Only one person testified against the bill, David Trieweiler, representing the Washington Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Washington Defenders Association.
He suggested legislators let the current law make an impact before passing a law that only focuses on punishment.
”We must begin to wean ourselves off the addiction to increased incarceration as the solution to all of our problems,” said Trieweiler.
The bill’s prime sponsor, Rep. Mari Leavitt, (D) Pierce County, said the same concern was raised when the bill was introduced in the House and she did not expect it to harm the bill’s chances of passing out of the Senate.