THROW AWAY THE KEY

Guard who raped inmate should get max: warden

The chief of Brooklyn’s federal jail called on a judge to sentence ex-correction officer Carlos Martinez to life in prison for raping an inmate in 2015, saying the guard “stains the reputation” of the federal prison system.

“Carlos Martinez deserves the maximum penalty authorized by law,” Metropolitan Detention Center Warden Herman Quay said in the letter written in 2018 and made public on Thursday.

“I believe a term of imprisonment is necessary to punish Carlos Martinez for his misconduct and to provide an adequate deterrent to others, who, like Carlos Martinez, would compromise the security of MDC Brooklyn and the integrity of the BOP for their own selfish ends,” Quay’s letter says.

Martinez (photo), 51, a former corrections lieutenant, was convicted in 2018 of repeatedly raping an incarcerated woman named Maria in the troubled Brooklyn jail in 2015 and 2016.

Quay’s letter focuses on how Martinez’s actions affected other staff in the jail.

“His betrayal has left many of his former co-workers feeling confused, angry and less safe in their daily job,” Quay wrote, adding that Martinez’s conviction “stains the reputation” of all the officers at the facility.

Martinez’s sentencing, originally scheduled for 2018, has been repeatedly delayed — partly by his effort to seek a new trial — and is now set for Dec. 2.

Also in 2018, one of Martinez’s colleagues at the Brooklyn jail, Eugenio Perez, was convicted of charges involving forcing women inmates to perform oral sex on him from 2013 to 2016.

One woman claimed in a lawsuit that both Martinez and Perez raped her while she was an inmate.

A guard at Manhattan’s federal jail, the Metropolitan Correctional Center, pleaded guilty earlier this year to sexually abusing seven women.

Another guard at the MCC forced a woman visiting the jail to have sex with him after he discovered she was trying to enter with contraband, prosecutors charged in September.