Circuit Judge Faauga Tootoo sentenced today the former top Department of Public Safety training officer to a year of probation for falsifying her academic transcripts.

J. Marte Martinez entered into a plea agreement with the Department of the Attorney General and pleaded guilty on Oct. 17 to two counts of tampering with a government record and two counts of unsworn falsification to authorities, all misdemeanors.

The other 10 offenses she was initially charged with, including two counts of perjury, a Class C felony, were dismissed.

Deputy Attorney General Cheuk Fu Lui asked the court to sentence her to four months in jail in addition to probation, but Tootoo denied the request.

Lui was prepared to present testimony of an investigator and additional evidence that she lied to the court by claiming she attended all the classes that the false documents showed. The Department of the Attorney General’s investigator would have testified that he requested a diploma and records and received the false documents from one of the schools she claimed to have attended, including the identical classes she claimed to have taken.

Martinez apologized, saying she let people down, particularly subordinates, and that she did it for expediency’s sake because her then-superior DPS Director Nolan Espinda gave her two weeks to get the documents or she would be fired.

Martinez said she is the sole breadwinner of her family and cannot afford to pay someone to watch her disabled husband if she is incarcerated.