Juan Martinez - So, So Hot and So, So Cold

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The debate about whether Prosecutor Juan Martinez is an Avenging Angel bringing sweet relief to the crying souls of murder victims or a Demon doing the devil's work of browbeating innocent-ish defendants and their sainted legal teams into broken submission has busted out anew with the publication of a new newspaper article.

The article is a long-form piece, so refreshing to find in these days of click-bait Air-Puffed News Crunchies. Arizona Republic reporter Michael Kiefer worked on it for several months, researching and analyzing data on the incidence of allegations of misconduct against prosecutors in Arizona's death penalty cases for roughly the last ten years.

If you are coming to this blog from outside Arizona, and most of you do, Kiefer's work (it's actually a week-long series) will still be relevant to you because it gives insight into American courts in general and also highlights several cases that have captured the nation's attention at various times. Most famously and most recently, the series highlights the case of Jodi Arias. Visitors to this blog tend to be, ahem, very interested in that case.

The third article in Kiefer's series is devoted entirely to allegations of misconduct against Jodi Arias prosecutor Juan Martinez.

Juan Martinez is a polarizing figure. No question about it. He has a unique charisma in the courtroom that attracts adoring fans to his quietly burning fire and bionic-man efficiency or repels others to the core with his lightning strikes of sarcasm and take-no-prisoners advocacy where his five foot four frame seems to loom menacingly huge like a shadow in the most frightening Gothic film.

This summer I was a guest of the Arizona Public Defender Association, on a panel speaking to a ballroom full of lawyers. When the name Juan Marinez came up, the collective growl of 500 defense attorneys was palpable, audible, and almost feral.

In the prosecutorial misconduct article, Michael Kiefer shows us the Gothic version of Martinez, a prosecutor who seems to flit in and out of the halls of justice with the eternal indemnity of a vampire and the same morals.

Michael Kiefer himself has picked up some angry detractors of his own. I count myself one of his friends and fans. He has always been a generous and valued colleague to me.

Kimball and Kiefer

We have often viewed the same event through different lenses and that makes no difference to my respect for him. It's beneficial that we can look at the same elephant with him focusing on the trunk and me fixated on the size.

So here are a couple of my casual observations about his article on the sins of Juan Martinez.

First, a bit about the Jodi Arias section. Michael writes, 'Martinez was frequently insulting. The first question he posed to Arias during cross-examination set the tone, when he displayed a photograph to the courtroom and described it to her as a “picture of you and your dumb sister.”'

To me, that sentence could have been a bit more precisely punctuated. It should have had more quote marks in it. Picking it up in the latter half it should have looked more like this,

...and described it to her as a "picture of you and your 'dumb' sister."

As I recall the courtroom action, Martinez was not in that moment himself insulting defendant Jodi Arias's sister. He was quoting Arias herself, as entered into evidence. He was showing the photo of the two sisters together possibly to underscore the defendant's tendency to arrogance and duplicity by coupling it with Jodi's own remark about the younger Arias.

Media of the world in a pic I snapped leaving the Jodi Arias courthouse

In the section about the Doug Grant case (click here for more on Doug Grant), in which a nutrition king was accused of murdering his wife, every-bit-as-famous-in-his-own-right defense attorney Mel McDonald is quoted as complaining that Martinez had objected to just about every question he had posed to a witness. This is, yes, a very annoying tactic when you are one of the observers in a courtroom. It is hardly, however, the singular sin of prosecutors in general nor of Juan Martinez in particular. Any courtroom observer has seen it done by both sides of the aisle. Some judges keep a tighter rein on it than others. I'm no expert, but I don't think it's defined in the rules of courtroom procedure as a sin, at all. It can't be, for as often as I've seen it done.

The Republic article rightly lists the many pieces of evidence of drowning victim Faylene Grant's bizarre and cheerful obsession with her own death. I think I will use my own space here to also mention  some of the other evidence such as that the origin of her obsession was subject to debate. Did Doug have some kind of Svengali-like hold over her, leading her to write about death for his own sinister purposes? One of Faylene's own kids testified to having been blocked from access to her mother that morning, breaking with the household's normal routine. And the strange idea that natural health expert Doug had of calling a buddy instead of 911 upon finding his wife in mortal distress and that of feeding her excessive doses of powerful drugs against advice.

I shall leave the Doug Grant section with the notation that defense attorney McDonald himself considered the outcome of the case a victory for his client and well he should.

Lastly, the section in the Republic article about prostitute-killer Cory Morris hammers on Martinez's conduct regarding allegations of possible habitual necrophilia by the defendant. Was the evidence for this medical in nature? Apparently not. I did not sit in on this case, as I did the others mentioned, but I trust the reportage and accept it with confidence. But it does make a perfect case of me fixating on the size of the same elephant while someone else is examining its trunk. As I understand it, the corpses of the unfortunate women were recovered in states of advanced decay. It is unlikely it was at all possible to establish this kind of assault via medical evidence, with all the soft and fleshy parts of the bodies no longer coherent in form. But crimes are often proved in court without medical evidence. (Rick Valentini was recently convicted of the murder of Jamie Laiaddee with no medical evidence at all: her body has never been found, nor a crime scene--click here)

From what we know about sexual serial killers, the necrophilia is highly likely and a reasonable assumption especially given other facts of the Cory Morris case. But, most of all, why on earth would medical evidence of abuse of a corpse be crucial to the outcome of this case? Abuse of a corpse is not a capital charge. Victory against Martinez on this charge would lead to...crickets chirping.

It seems the fight for whether Morris actually murdered five women or not has been abandoned. Let's say appeal attorneys do win this battle. Cory Morris no longer can be considered guilty of necrophilia. He was never convicted of Abuse of a Corpse anyway. Morris is currently waiting on Death Row for five executions for five murders. The end. No sentences for any other crime. Just murder.

My guess is the appeals team hopes it can taint the verdict by saying the jurors were unfairly influenced by the improper "disgust" factor. If so, I may have more faith in jurors than do Morris's lawyers. If we could send people to Death Row for disgusting conduct, epic child molester Jerry Sandusky from Penn State would be there right now.  I believe jurors know that.

I also believe the strangling of five human beings is monstrous enough and so does the law.

Or perhaps their arguments have to do with the enhancements required to be found by a jury before a murder conviction can be considered for the death penalty. But committing 5 murders will get you over that hump so, again, crickets. And for more about how the law regards crimes against a dead person as opposed to a live one, see this post on Trent Benson.

So those are some of my top of mind reactions to the prosecutorial misconduct article in the Republic. Your mileage may vary.

The paper's series, by the way, opens with a highlight on retired prosecutor Noel Levy. He handled the Debra Milke case (click here for that case). I'll be doing more about it in the future. More details on Levy are available in my book, WHAT SHE ALWAYS WANTED about Marjorie Orbin.

Please join the debate on the Republic's Gothic Juan Martinez in the comment section below.  I would love to hear from you, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Brandi Hungerford: A "Pretty Bad Girl."

Crime writer Camille Kimball on set for Pretty Bad Girls on ID

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Show: Pretty Bad Girls
Episode title: Hungry Heart
Main character: Brandi Hungerford
Network: Investigation Discovery
Date: Friday, December 28, 2012

9:30 pm or CHECK YOUR LOCAL LISTINGS



 Tonight, Friday December 28, 2012, Investigation Discovery debuts a new episode on Brandi Hungerford.  That's me, getting set up for my interview with the "Pretty Bad Girls" crew.

Brandi was one of those petite young women with thick long hair that makes them a "10" for a lot of admirers.  She started off her adventure into adulthood after high school with a short-lived attempt at higher education. She quickly turned to stripping instead.

And a highly dangerous form of stripping, at that. Brandi was paid to visit men privately, often in a hotel room, where she'd do her dance while the man often, ahem, kept his hands to himself, so to speak.

Or not. Only Brandi really knows what went on between her and her clients.

Robert Donald Lemke II

While Brandi played the vixen for lonely men, she herself fell under the spell of another skin trade worker, Robert Lemke.  Lemke was an aggressive young man with plans and schemes and very bulky muscles. Their attraction for each other was intense.

While these two were taking their clothes off and bumping and grinding away for hire, television sets all around the area of Tempe, Arizona and surrounding Phoenix communities were regularly blaring out commercials for auto glass replacement. The beaming face of entrepreneur Rick Chance would offer you a substantial batch of free restaurant meals, if only you'd allow him to replace your windshield when it caught a rock.

Rick was a born salesman, an idea man, a pursuer of dreams. And his hard work had brought him quite a comfortable lifestyle.

Rick was never one to stay in the same gear for long. By the time Brandi Hungerford crossed his path, Rick had set his sights on the jewelry business.

In a scheme notable for both its brutality and its clownish errors, Rick Chance would lose his life to this pair, his corpse discovered in a hotel room by maids, a briefcase full of jewelry dribbling clues as police chased Brandi and Robert on the lam to the Pacific Northwest.

I'll let Pretty Bad Girls fill you in on the rest of the story.

Brandi happens to make an appearance in my book, WHAT SHE ALWAYS WANTED, which is about Marjorie Orbin. Brandi, housed in the same jail for awhile, became a lesbian lover of convicted dismemberment murderer Marjorie. And then, this girl who marched boldly into hotel rooms of strange men and plotted a murder of her own, became afraid of Marjorie. 

When Pretty Bad Girls came to town, they set up a green screen while we talked. So we can expect some fancy post-production effects. I rather expect some actors will be playing out my words behind my head while I speak. I do hope I was coherent. In order to keep the sound quality pristine, the crew turned off the air conditioning!  This was in the summer time in Phoenix. It's a wonder they didn't have to call an ambulance for me by the time we were through.  A business suit, a small room, and TV lights do not mix well with unabated heat!