Juan Martinez

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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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