More Prison Time for Dover Man Convicted of Assaulting Deputy

Rochester, MN (KROC-AM News)- A Dover man will spend more time behind bars after being convicted of assaulting an Olmsted County detention deputy. 

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33-year-old Joseph Martin entered a guilty plea in February to a fourth-degree assault charge through a plea agreement that resulted in the dismissal of a third-degree assault charge and a gross misdemeanor count of assault. 

The charge stems from an incident in the Olmsted County Adult Detention Center in December 2022 in which Martin was accused of attacking a fellow detainee in the jail before he assaulted a 70-year-old detention deputy when he tried to intervene in the altercation. An Olmsted County judge on Friday sentenced Martin to a year and a day in prison. 

The sentencing calls for Martin to serve the sentence for the 4th-degree assault conviction consecutively with a 28-month prison term he’s serving for a previous assault conviction in which he was  punching and knocking out two men at a bar in Dover and a domestic assault conviction for an attack on his girlfriend in 2021.

Court records indicate the judge fulfilled a request from Olmsted County prosecutors, who asked the court to order Martin to serve the time consecutively to his existing prison sentence.