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Here’s part 3 of Michael Kiefer’s new series, which highlights & fully details countless instances of prosecutorial misconduct in AZ over the past 11 years… where winning is invariably far more important than the truth.
As I said yesterday — Kudos to Michael Keifer for his highlighting of this issue too. He’s already taking flak on his Twitter account from delusional pedo-huggers & people with a necrophilia fetish… and long may it continue. After all, everyone else’s fuck-ups get highlighted. Why should prosecutors fuck-ups be treated any different?
You can keep up with all Michael’s tweets right here in his Twitter page.
Today, the well documented prosecutorial misconduct, lies & deception of Juan Martinez is highlighted in great detail.
Here’s the latest installment:
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Objections raised to Juan Martinez’s conduct in Jodi Arias trial (Part 3/4)
by Michael Kiefer:
“Juan Martinez was Arizona Prosecutor of the Year in 1999, more than a decade before he became a media darling with his performance in the Jodi Arias murder trial.
This year, Martinez convinced a jury to find Arias guilty of first-degree murder, but the jurors could not reach consensus on whether to sentence her to death or life, and Arias likely faces a new trial to make that decision.
Martinez helped send seven other killers to death row since he was hired at the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office in 1988.
He was accused by defense attorneys of prosecutorial misconduct in all but one of those cases; the Arizona Supreme Court characterized his actions as constituting misconduct in one of them, and cited numerous instances of “improper” behavior in another, but neither rose to the level where the justices felt they needed to overturn the cases. Allegations of misconduct by Martinez in the second case and at least two others are pending in state and federal courts.
It is not uncommon for defense attorneys to allege misconduct against prosecutors. A study by The Arizona Republic determined that it was alleged in about half of all death-penalty cases since 2002, and validated in nearly one-quarter of them.
But it is rare for Supreme Court justices to call out a prosecutor’s conduct in open court.
One day in mid-2010, the Arizona Supreme Court was on the bench as lawyers presented arguments during the direct appeal of a first-degree murder conviction and death sentence for a man named Mike Gallardo, who killed a teenager during a Phoenix burglary in 2005.
Transcripts show Justice Andrew Hurwitz turned to the attorney representing the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, the prosecutorial agency that handles death-penalty appeals.
“Can I ask you a question about something that nobody’s discussed so far?” he asked. “The conduct of the trial prosecutor. It seems to me that at least on several occasions, and by and large the objections were sustained, that the trial prosecutor either ignored rulings by the trial judge or asked questions that the trial judges once ruled improper and then rephrased the question in another improper way. … Short of reversing a conviction, how is it that we can… stop inappropriate conduct?”
The assistant attorney general struggled to answer.
Justice Michael Ryan then stepped into the discussion.
“Well, this prosecutor I recollect from several cases,” Ryan said. “This same prosecutor has been accused of fairly serious misconduct, but ultimately we decided it did not rise to the level of requiring a reversal,” Ryan said. “There’s something about this prosecutor, Mr. Martinez.”
There had been multiple allegations of prosecutorial misconduct against Martinez in Gallardo’s appeal. Ultimately, in its written opinion, the court determined that Martinez had repeatedly made improper statements about the defendant. During the oral argument before the Supreme Court, the justices fixed on a question that Martinez asked three times, even though the trial judge in the case had sustained a defense attorney’s objections to the question.
But in the end, the justices ruled that Martinez’s behavior still did not “suggest pervasive prosecutorial misconduct that deprived (the defendant) of a fair trial.”
And, as the justices noted, it was not the first time that Martinez had walked away unscathed…….”
“Arias admitted that she killed Alexander and claimed that she shot him after he attacked her. For four years, police and prosecution maintained that Arias first shot Alexander and then stabbed him and slit his throat. But days before jury selection, Martinez changed the facts of the case, saying that Arias had shot Alexander last instead of first; Arias’ attorneys, Kirk Nurmi and Jennifer Willmott, protested that the rationale for seeking the death penalty had been based on the first theory.
They filed a motion for mistrial alleging prosecutorial misconduct when Martinez appeared on television, signing autographs and posing for photos with fans.
Martinez verbally attacked Arias and her witnessess. He painted Arias as a sexual predator. He asked compound questions and then accused witnesses of being non-responsive when they would not answer yes or no.
“I would not have let the cross-examinations go on for that long,” said Fields, the retired judge. “It was just badgering and bullying the witnesses in an attempt to ruin their credibility. It crossed the line.”
As video and transcripts later showed, many of the trial’s most contentious moments took place in the judge’s chambers or at the bench, out of earshot of the rest of the courtroom and the cameras. Etiquette is a given during court proceedings. 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.”
One day at the bench, as the attorneys debated whether to admit a statement about whether Alexander wanted to kill himself, transcripts show Martinez said, “But the thing is that if Ms. Willmott and I were married, I certainly would say, ‘I fucking want to kill myself.’”
Willmott objected, and two days later at another bench conference, Martinez said to Willmott, “Well, then, maybe you ought to go back to law school.”
Nurmi asked Judge Sherry Stephens to step in, but she did not.
“In my view, that would have been a fine,” Fields said. “I probably would have reported him to the Bar. It shows his bias. It’s just inappropriate.”
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Remember…
WE ARE TEAM JODI – AND WE WILL BE VICTORIOUS in our quest for JUSTICE FOR JODI!
Leave your thoughts & comments below.
SJ
Team Jodi
If you would like to help Jodi by way of a financial donation to the official JAA APPELLATE FUND, click the Team Jodi link below for further details. All donations go directly to the fund for assisting with the legal fees associated with appealing Jodi’s wrongful conviction. Thank you for your support!
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FIRST!!!!
Ray IN H-burg Va.
Even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while….HA I still got it!
Ray in H-burg Va.
Congrats Ray!
Cool dude!
Congats 😀
You beat me to it again. Hehe.
Sorry to say, I’m disappointed in this one. To me it seems like Kiefer soft pedaled it – maybe because he knew that emotions still run too high on this case, or maybe because he just doesn’t hate Martinez as much as I do.
(there, I said it lurkers – I do hate Juan Martinez. I’ve never hated Travis, but I hated Martinez even before he finished presenting the state’s case in chief – the man was bullying his own witnesses for cryin’ out loud.)
Kiefer’s piece seems devastating to me. For example, he confirms the constant evidence withholding, plus the switch in the state’s story “days before jury selection.” I think this series is one of the best things to happen for Jodi in years! Let’s hope he wins a Pulitzer for it.
You’re right, Chris….
I guess what I was hoping for was that he saw stuff that we missed, lol. I wanted NEW news!
Still, I don’t find it encouraging that he’s gotten away with similar and worse in the past, with no repercussions.
Maybe the fact that he had an international stage upon which to embarrass the Arizona justice system will have some impact on the AZSC.
If you read the comments underneath, you’ll see that TA’s supporters think the exact opposite and are bashing Kiefer. Quite predictable of course…
Quite predictable, yes… sort of my point.
The ranting comments aren’t new or surprising to any of us. To those of us here that have closely followed the case, the article wasn’t news either. All of those damning facts about Martinez are old news, and we sat and watched while Stephens allowed all of it to happen.
Sure, it’s great to see SOMEONE in ‘mainstream media’ saying what we’ve been saying, but the rest of the message isn’t too encouraging.
The Lise Lasalle piece linked on yesterday’s thread again has a quote from Jodi’s journal that I’ve never seen: “I’ve somehow managed to become Travis’ whipping girl and we’re both addicted to it.” Was this quoted at trial? If not, where did Lasalle get it?
I asked before if Jodi’s journal was online, but the only suggestion I got was to look at GeeBee2’s site. I can’t find it there.
I remember that, either late in the trial or just shortly after, some of Jodi’s journal pages were released – certainly not all of them because she’d been keeping a journal all of her life. I know they were reading aloud from the journal on HLN, so you might be able to find some of the pages on their website.
I found this site that has some of the journal entries check it out.
http://kristinarandle.com/blog/jodi-arias-journal-entries-2/
Thanks, Oregonmom. These entries are interesting (and the post-6/4 ones disturbing), but even this little collection doesn’t contain the “whipping girl” entry.
I’m surprised to see someone with a mental-health PhD describe Jodi as a “pathological liar.” This is basically one aspect of the psychopathy charge that was bandied about in the media. GeeBee2 destroys this possibility in his entry on the topic, by going through diagnostic criteria. It’s also eliminated by Darryl Brewer and Jodi’s other past boyfriends. Obviously, from their descriptions, she was not a psychopath or pathological liar when she was with them — more like the exact opposite. But it is psychiatrically impossible to become a psychopath at age 26, even if you meet a Mormon sales cult. It would take Harry Potter or Hermione Granger. Without magic, you can no more become a psychopath at age 26 than you can turn into a giraffe.
SJ,
I’m really enjoying reading this pieces that you’re posting on here. Thank you! It’s too bad that this information didn’t get the publicity that it should’ve gotten during the Jodi Arias trial. Personally, I miss CourtTV when you could watch a trial in real-time with very limited commercial interruptions and the commentators were usually fair and objective. Nancy Grace used to be one of those commentators and, believe it or not, when she worked for CourtTV she was very good. But over the years, Nancy has become unhinged and I mean no disrespect when I say this, but I seriously think she’s unbalanced. Something happened to Nancy after she went to HLN and, whatever it was, it must be contagious because it’s affected everyone else at that network, too.
There were many times throughout the trial that I observed Juan Martinez’s behavior with shock because I couldn’t believe that this would be permitted in a courtroom. I understand that you’ve got to be tough, but there’s a way of doing it where you don’t come across as an asshole. All you got to do is look at the George Zimmerman trial. As intense and divisive as that trial was, I think a large part of why there wasn’t rioting or the level of hate and discontent that was predicted by many was because of the behavior of both the prosecution and defense. Yes, there were some heated moments between them, but they were few and far between and nowhere near the level of animosity that was exhibited between Juan Martinez, Jennifer Willmott and Kirk Nurmi.
There should be a consolidation of all these fragmented, sites; as, there are proofs, galloping, in this soap opera, that, prove, Jodi, did none of it, and, that, dozens of reasonable doubts, were concealed from the trial…as well as the facts, supporting, an extradition, were, defective, on their face; to, scam, jurisdiction…… Edgar…
Short of waving a magic wand what do you suppose we could do to help, that we haven’t done so far?
I was on the front page of our local newspaper, because our small town prosecuter was a ….bar hopping,above the law, pervert.
I was so humiliated, I moved, got a new job.
The town prosecuter liked to ” take away ” charges ,if you were a female,and gave him what he wanted.
They, being newspaper, posted pics of me, kissing him on the cheek,at the bar,[ where I worked]. They used me, as the example of his misdoings. We were pulled over in his car, and he was drunk. The police officer pulled him over. ….Prosucuter showed cop, a badge/ or something in his wallet, and cop said, “SORRY, MR>CARIDAD” HAVE A GREAT NIGHT>
SOO this INJUSTICE< HAPPENS EVERYWHERE.
My ex was arrested, and his mom tried to use, the prosecuters actions with me, to get a new trial.
The prosecuter was given a month off, but continues to practice law, and you can find him at the local bar….LOL in the same place, as before.
Now, the newspapers lied, saying there was a love triangle,happening. { NOT TRUE}
MY ex boyfriend was trying to get a new trial, based on the prosecuters "faulty behaviors." If you want more info, I can backup my story. google it, State of C.T. Jason Gulino / Mindy Biamonte, and prosecuter was Roger Caridad.,
Newspaper was in the C.T. paper The Journal Inquire. Jason's mom SHOT HERSELF IN HEAD, after all of this happened with her son.
I have nothing against the prosecuter, if the TOWN, POLICE, and COURTS want to give lawyers "ABOVE THE LAW STATUS." Then we are all screwed!
It was in PRINT,IN NEWSPAPER that I was meeting the prosecuter in his offices, doing SEX ACTS WITH HIM”
LIES LIES LIES….I have 3 son’s that might someday look up their mom, and that is IN PRINT…..about me.
I moved, changed jobs, got out of town.
SORRY JODI ! I know, what it is like, because I was young beautiful,and naive, I talked to investigators, that took ,pieces of what I said, and made me look bad.
I called for a lawyer to defend my honor, due to the “lies told” the lawyer ,said that the press can say what the want. HE THEN asked if any of it was true!!!!????
This is a long post, but I wanted the world to know, I HAVE SEEN IT!! LAWYERS, JUDGES, POLICEMEN, ALL ACT ABOVE THE LAW. ESP. WITH WOMEN…..SEX ,LIES, DRUNKS!!
JODI needs a hero!!!