Eliazar Martinez-Rodriguez pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter and a separate jail assault committed while awaiting resolution of the homicide case.

OREGON CITY, Ore. — An Oregon man was sentenced to 25 years in prison after admitting he fatally stabbed 30-year-old Jefferson Smith Cates at a Clackamas apartment complex and later assaulted another prisoner while jailed in the homicide case, according to the Clackamas County District Attorney’s Office.

The sentence imposed Sept. 15 totaled 300 months and resolved two serious felony cases tied to Eliazar Martinez-Rodriguez, 35. Prosecutors said he pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter for Cates’ June 2024 death and second-degree assault for a May 2026 jail attack. The court imposed 230 months for the manslaughter conviction and 70 months for the assault. The district attorney’s office described the killing as an act motivated by jealousy after Martinez-Rodriguez learned that Cates was romantically involved with the same woman he had been seeing.

Prosecutors said Martinez-Rodriguez had occasionally stayed with the woman at the Crown Court apartments on Southeast 97th Avenue. He did not know she also had been intimate with Cates, according to the district attorney’s office. The situation came to a head on June 22, 2024, when Cates and the woman returned to her apartment and encountered Martinez-Rodriguez. Prosecutors said Martinez-Rodriguez had become angry after learning of Cates’ relationship with the woman. The woman has not been identified in the public accounts reviewed for this report.

Cates left the apartment after becoming uneasy with Martinez-Rodriguez’s behavior, prosecutors said. Instead of ending there, the encounter moved elsewhere in the complex. The district attorney’s office said Martinez-Rodriguez later located Cates and stabbed him in the heart. Senior Deputy District Attorney Rusty Amos said witnesses heard a scream during the attack. Cates then made his way to an acquaintance’s apartment, where he died. The county’s sentencing release identified Cates as 30 years old and said the attack was driven by jealousy.

The first public reports from the scene were more limited. Clackamas County deputies were called to the Crown Court apartments shortly before 1 a.m. after multiple 911 callers reported hearing someone yell for help and one caller said a man had been injured, according to contemporaneous local reporting based on the sheriff’s office. Deputies arrived and found a bystander helping Cates. First responders took over lifesaving efforts, but he died at the scene. The medical examiner later ruled the death a homicide. At that early stage, authorities had not publicly announced an arrest or described a motive.

The later prosecution filled in details that were not known publicly in the first days after the killing. Prosecutors said Martinez-Rodriguez and Cates knew the same woman and that Martinez-Rodriguez reacted with anger when he learned of Cates’ involvement with her. The district attorney’s office did not portray the killing as a sudden mutual fight. Its account said Cates walked away from the initial encounter before Martinez-Rodriguez found him somewhere else in the apartment complex. That sequence became central to the official account released at sentencing two years later.

Cates’ mother, Lynette Brunson, addressed Martinez-Rodriguez at sentencing and described the lasting effects of her son’s death. “I carry Jefferson’s ashes with me every day, but you carry his blood on your hands,” she said, according to the district attorney’s office. Brunson also said the killing had left her with recurring nightmares and serious health problems, including high blood pressure, a stroke and a heart condition known as takotsubo cardiomyopathy. Her statement focused on the continuing damage the death caused Cates’ family and people who knew him.

The case also carried a separate question about Martinez-Rodriguez’s status before Cates was killed. Prosecutors said Martinez-Rodriguez was on supervised release after serving time in federal prison on a firearms charge. He had been ordered to live at the Northwest Regional Re-Entry Center in Portland but violated the terms of his release by leaving the facility, according to the county. He was arrested and returned 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 later.

Brunson used part of her sentencing statement to criticize that earlier release decision. She said the federal judge’s choice to allow Martinez-Rodriguez to remain out of custody “literally haunts me.” The district attorney’s office included that statement in its account of the sentencing. The publicly available materials reviewed for this report do not include the federal judge’s reasoning or a response to Brunson’s criticism, so the basis for the decision cannot be independently described from the sentencing release alone.

While Martinez-Rodriguez was in the Clackamas County Jail awaiting resolution of the homicide case, prosecutors said he committed another violent offense. On May 20, 2026, he attacked another prisoner without provocation, according to the district attorney’s office. Prosecutors said Martinez-Rodriguez struck the inmate repeatedly in the head and face, leaving him on his back, injured and breathing heavily. The prisoner was taken by ambulance to a hospital and survived. That incident led to the second-degree assault conviction that added 70 months to Martinez-Rodriguez’s sentence.

The legal path to the final sentence was not identical to the charge first brought after Cates’ death. Reporting from July 2024 said a Clackamas County grand jury indicted Martinez-Rodriguez on second-degree murder. By the time the case ended in 2026, he had pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter instead. The public sentencing release confirms the manslaughter plea and sentence but does not spell out the negotiations or legal reasoning that led from the original murder charge to the manslaughter conviction. The record cited by the district attorney’s office is Clackamas County Circuit Court case 24CR34601.

The sentencing also marked the point at which several strands of the public record could be read together. In June 2024, authorities initially disclosed only that Cates had been found critically injured after reports of calls for help and that his death was being treated as a homicide. By July, a grand jury had accused Martinez-Rodriguez of second-degree murder. The 2026 sentencing account added the claimed jealousy motive, the sequence inside the apartment complex, the supervised-release history and the separate jail assault. Those later details came from prosecutors after Martinez-Rodriguez entered guilty pleas, rather than from the first investigative statements issued immediately after Cates died.

Senior Deputy District Attorney Rusty Amos and Deputy District Attorney Randi Hall prosecuted the case, the county said. The sentencing closed a case that began with a late-night emergency response, developed into a homicide prosecution and later expanded when Martinez-Rodriguez assaulted a fellow prisoner. The two convictions were punished together in the 300-month sentence, but each grew from a separate act occurring nearly two years apart. The district attorney’s office did not announce any additional state charges or future hearings in its Sept. 15 sentencing release. Its announcement instead treated the 300-month term as the final state-court resolution of the killing and the later jail assault, while preserving the case number and the names of the prosecutors who handled it.

Martinez-Rodriguez now faces the 25-year prison term imposed for first-degree manslaughter and second-degree assault. The most recent official county statement reviewed for this report identifies the sentence as 230 months for Cates’ death and 70 months for the jail assault. No further court date was listed in that release. The case’s public record now centers on the guilty pleas, the combined sentence and Brunson’s account of the harm caused by her son’s death.

Author note: Last updated November 6, 2026.