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

Please visit the Bookstore tab above to browse  
Pssst! Going to jail, buying documents, and everything else it takes to get this kind of info for the blog takes time and money! Every time you make a purchase here, it helps me be able to do more for you!

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.

Juan Martinez's Other Big Case

Crime writer Camille Kimball on the courthouse steps of the Jodi Arias trial

I've been inside the #JodiArias courtroom all day tweeting about the war of wills between defense witness Alyce LaViolette, a psychotherapist, and prosecutor Juan Martinez, incipient rock star. This trial contains many references to religious beliefs because the Mormon church played a prominent role in defendant Jodi and murder victim Travis' relationship. He baptized her into the Mormon church shortly after meeting her, they tended to define their relationship with each other in terms of how their interaction fit into Mormon ideals, Jodi was absorbed into Travis' Mormon social life when she moved to Mesa, Arizona to be near him. So we are hearing an awful lot about Mormon practices, beliefs, and social norms in the wide and spacious courtroom on the fifth floor.

At the end of the day, I mentioned to my followers on Twitter that Juan Martinez had been the  prosecutor  in the last big Mormon case we had here which was husband Doug Grant on trial for the murder of his wife, Faylene. I tweeted a link to a newspaper story done by the charming Michael Kiefer at the time for the Arizona Republic. Some twittles are asking me how the verdict turned out?

Well, here's a picture of Doug Grant now. Does the bright orange shirt signal to you that his current address is Guest of the State of Arizona?

Doug Grant was convicted of Manslaughter and sentenced to five years.  Juan Martinez had hoped for a  Murder One conviction and some jurors wanted that, too, but compromised on the Manslaughter to make sure Doug Grant didn't walk out the front door.

Juan Martinez had a much tougher hill to climb in the Doug Grant case than he does in the Jodi Arias case. Faylene drowned in her own bathtub and Doug Grant did make attempts to save her and call for help.

Faylene also left a rich trove of journal entries and letters describing her premonition of pending death, though she was not ill. In these writings, she seems cheerful enough about exiting life. She goes to pains to set up her children with a new mother -- her husband's ongoing affair partner.

This woman, Hilary, was kind enough to oblige the morbidly inclined Faylene 3 weeks after the drowning by marrying the freshly bereaved widower. 

The defense had substantial material to argue that Faylene committed suicide by climbing into the tub with her stomach full of Ambien sleeping pills. But the dose was far from lethal, although heavy - 5 pills.

Faylene also had a real reason to take the pills, she was in pain from a dramatic fall down a mountain just days before. Bumps and bruises everywhere. So the defense also had substantial room to argue that the drowning was a tragic accident of pain and sleepiness.

Doug's own role was a mastery of vagueness and mystery.  He claimed he helped Faylene climb into the tub...but returned to bed and fell back asleep.

He called for help when he found her in the morning...but he called a friend who was in the medical field (not a doctor) not 9-1-1.

Who was with her on that hike where she tumbled dangerously down the side of a mountain? Doug alone.

Faylene was obssessed with death and with Hilary's "joining" their family, but was Faylene highly suggestible? Did her husband, a charismatic man, exploit their shared religious beliefs to plant convenient ideas in her head? Juan Martinez hammered home during trial that Doug had a Svengali-like hold over his wife, capitalizing on the patriarchal authority structure of their religion. Suicide, the prosecutor emphasized through testimony and argument, would have been utterly against Faylene's so strongly held religious beliefs and would have kept her out of the heaven she cherished.

Faylene had no stab wounds, no bullet wounds, no slit throat. She had a well documented history of strange beliefs about her own death and her husband's relationship with another woman and that woman's destiny with Faylene's own children. So it is not a complete surprise that one or more jurors had trouble fully embracing the murder theory. 

Nevertheless, Juan Martinez did put his man behind bars. Doug Grant looks like he has a fairly decent record in prison and is currently working as an aide to the prison chaplain. He will be released next year. 

By the way, if you thought Juan Martinez was playing for the camera in the Jodi Arias trial, well, his M.O. in trials you've never seen on TV, such as the Doug Grant case, is no different. You are getting the Real Juan Martinez in the Jodi Arias case. 

So this is a good opportunity to let all my twittles know that I can't always see all of your questions at @CamilleKimball  If you haven't heard back from me, please feel free to leave a question or comment on Jodi Arias below.  And I'd like to emphasize to all the newcomers, I am inside the courtroom, not following on video.

Look for this truck across the street behind me in the photo at top

I'd also like to hear what you think about Juan Martinez below? Is he an ineffective bully? Or a rock star strategist?

Knowing what you just read about the Doug Grant case, did Juan haul a heavy load to the top of the hill? Or did he let it slip out of his hands? Or did he put an innocent widower in jail? 

Please visit the Bookstore tab above to browse  
Pssst! Going to jail, buying documents, and everything else it takes to get this kind of info for the blog takes time and money! Every time you make a purchase here, it helps me be able to do more for you!