Justice delayed:
Martinez avoids death sentence for murder of Arizona DPS officer by dragging out trial in Calif. for killing shopkeeper
Three years after Arizona DPS Officer Robert Martin was gunned down during a 1995 traffic stop on the Beeline Highway, his killer was sentenced to die. But five years ago, Ernesto Martinez was extradited to California to face another charge from that 1995 crime spree. Things have not gone as expected. Besides being accused of attacking his cellmate, Martinez has engaged in a series of delay tactics that have stymied prosecutors, leading some to question the wisdom and expense of trying a man already sentenced to die.
PALM SPRINGS, Calif. — Twenty years ago, 40 police officers surrounded a trailer in Indio, Calif., with their guns drawn. They had chased an Arizona cop killer for 300 miles, and now — after tracking his bloody trail through two states — they finally had him cornered.
“I’m not coming out,” shouted Ernesto Salgado Martinez. He was only 19, but already a hardened criminal, prepared to die. “You will have to come in and shoot me.”
It was Aug. 16, 1995. Over the prior 48 hours, Martinez had gunned down Arizona Department of Public Safety Officer Robert Martin on the Beeline Highway and killed a storekeeper in Blythe, police said. Martinez then fled to Indio, where an officer chased him into a mobile home with a barred door and barricaded windows. Police swarmed, rushing in from beyond the state line to help end the manhunt.
Four hours crept by. The summer sun set, blanketing the standoff in darkness. Eventually, police decid- ed it was time to break the stalemate. Officers prepared to launch tear gas, then storm through the doors and windows. A negotiator blasted a bullhorn, offering one last chance for surrender.
At that last moment, Martinez gave up. He crawled out of a window, shirtless, with his hands in the air. Police surrounded him in a tight circle, demanding that he lie on his stomach. Martinez dropped to the dirt, scowling as policemen forced him into handcuffs and hauled him off to jail.
Today, nearly 20 years later, Martinez is one of the most dangerous prisoners in Riverside County. He is a convicted killer with known ties to an Arizona prison gang. He has a long history of jailhouse attacks that date back to age 15, when he put a juvenile hall employee in the hospital.
Martinez is also doomed to die. He was sentenced to death in 1998 for the murder of Martin in Arizona where he was awating execution. The only reason
Martinez is in Riverside County — draining county funds and endangering prison guards — is because local prosecutors want to sentence him to death a second time, in California.
“I’m housed here in Riverside,” Martinez told a judge on April 17, during his most recent court hearing. “All is well. Living the dream.”
Martinez, now 39, has spent more than half of his life behind bars, most of those years in isolation. He is vicious, reckless and impulsive -- easily mistaken for just another caged gang banger. But that would be wrong. Martinez scored 120 on an IQ test, a score higher than 90 percent of the population, according to court documents. In another psychological test, Martinez was shown to have elite “non-verbal, problem-solving skills” which make him craftier than almost everyone.
In recent years, Martinez has effectively served as his own lawyer, meticulously planning his defense. He is as formidable with a fountain pen as he is with a prison shank.
“He is incredibly dangerous because he is so bright,” Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin said. “I would like to get him out of our system and out of our jail. And one of the ways to do that is to get this case to trial as quickly as possible.”
Two decades have passed since Martinez was arrested in Indio, but he has not yet gone to trial in the shooting of Randip Singh, the Blythe storekeeper.
For any normal inmate, it would be an injustice to sit in jail this long without a trial, but Martinez is far from normal. Martinez has no motivation to go to trial in Riverside County because — regardless of whether he is convicted or acquitted in California — when the trial is over, he will be sent back to death row in Arizona.
Martinez was sentenced to death in Arizona in1998 for the murder of Martin, a veteran officer of the highway patrol. Twelve years later, in 2010, local prosecutors extradited Martinez back to Riverside County, pulling him off death row so he could be tried for the shooting in Blythe.
At the time, desert prosecutors underestimated Martinez, expecting that he would be quickly convicted in the local courts, then sent back to Arizona for execution. Instead, Martinez fired his public defender and became his own attorney. He has mounted a thorough defense, challenging prosecutors at every turn, despite having no formal legal training.
Today — four-and-a-half years after Martinez was extradited — the inmate is still prepping his courtroom arguments. No trial date has been set.
Riverside County has spent more than $230,000 to jail Martinez since he was extradited in 2010. In addition, Martinez’s court case has demanded countless hours from prosecutors. In 2011, more county money was needlessly diverted to the case when Martinez tricked an Indio judge into appointing his mistress as his government-funded paralegal.
Extradition also brought Martinez’s violence back to Riverside County.
In 2011, about a year after Martinez returned to California, the notoriously dangerous inmate attacked his cellmate, stabbing him 50 times with a shiv, according to court documents. A similar attack would not have happened in Arizona, where death row inmates have no contact with each other.
Since the stabbing, Martinez is confined to an isolated cell. Martinez has pleaded not guilty to the stabbing and is awaiting trial on these charges, too.
The decision to extradite Martinez has had at least one other unforeseeable consequence. As Martinez has prepared to defend himself in California, he has used his jailhouse legal resources to bolster his appeal in Arizona. Martinez was able to successfully argue his case to a federal court last year, ultimately lengthening his appeal process and delaying his death for at least several more years.
During a recent interview with The Desert Sun, Hestrin said he would prioritize the Martinez case in an effort to
get the dangerous inmate out of local jails.
Hestrin said he will meet with his prosecution team in the coming weeks to develop a strategy for the Martinez case. The DA’s office may abandon its pursuit of the death penalty to speed up proceedings, Hestrin said.
Hestrin said he wants the case to go to trial this year, but admitted it may not be feasible because of Martinez’s surprising talent for legal arguments.
“Mr. Martinez represents himself, and he’s become very skilled at writing his own motions, and — of course — he has quite a bit of time to write his motions. And so the case has dragged on,” Hestrin said. Trial is not the only option, however. The quickest way for Riverside County to end the Martinez case would be for prosecutors to simply drop the charges from the Blythe shooting. If this was done, Singh’s murder would remain technically unsolved, but Martinez would immediately return to Arizona’s death row, where he would await execution without draining Riverside County funds.
Hestrin said he is “reluctant” to drop the charges. Although this would bring a speedy end to Martinez’s quagmire case, prosecutors would be shirking their “obligation to seek justice.”
“Mr. Martinez killed a store clerk with an Arizona police officer’s firearm. We are prosecutors. It is difficult to walk away from that,” Hestrin said. “Although I understand the practicalities, it’s not as simple as we just walk away.”
Hestrin took office in January, inheriting the Martinez case from his predecessors. The decision to extradite Martinez was ultimately approved by former District Attorney Rod Pacheco. Pacheco said he did not remember the details of the case, and could not be reached for additional comment. The case made minimal progress under former District Attorney Paul Zellerbach.
Martinez refused to be interviewed for this story.
During a brief meeting at the jail in Riverside, the convicted killer declined all comment.
“I’m sorry you wasted your time coming out here,” Martinez told a Desert Sun reporter, speaking through the jailhouse glass. “But I’m not going to do any talking.”
Federal Public Defender Tim Gabrielsen, who represents Martinez in Arizona, also declined to comment.
Two states, two shootings
In the summer of 1995, Ernesto Salgado Martinez, then 19, drove a stolen sedan into Arizona. The car was a Chevrolet Monte Carlo with shiny blue paint and a white vinyl top. This was the kind of long, heavy classic cruiser that catches the eye and guzzles gas.
If not for those two traits, Martinez may never have been caught.
In Arizona, Martinez drove to Globe, a small mining town in Gila County, where he caught up with a childhood friend, Oscar Fryer. As the two men talked, Martinez admitted he was in trouble with the police. Already a convicted felon, Martinez said he was now a fugitive, wanted for violating probation.
Fryer asked what Martinez would do if he was spotted by the cops. Martinez drew a .38-caliber revolver with black tape on the handle.
“I’m not going back to jail,” he said, according to Arizona court transcripts.
A few days later, about noon on Aug. 15, Martinez was zooming along State Route 87, The Beeline Highway heading back to his home in Indio. Martinez was behind the wheel of the stolen Monte Carlo, and he was speeding.
The flashing lights of a patrol car appeared in his rear-view mirror.
Martinez pulled to the side of the highway. Martin, a longtime patrolman, pulled up behind him, expecting a routine traffic stop. Both men stepped out of their cars. As Martin approached the Monte Carlo, Martinez shot him four times with the revolver, including once in the temple. Martin died on the spot.
Martinez grabbed the dead officer’s gun, jumped back into the Monte Carlo and punched the gas. The car swerved back onto the highway, racing away from the shooting scene at more than100 mph. Several motorists called the police to report the Monte Carlo for reckless driving. The officers who responded to the calls found Martin’s body, and the manhunt began.
Martin, 57, was a 28-year veteran of the Arizona Highway Patrol with three grown children and three younger stepchildren. Martin had spent most of his life in Chandler, and most of his days patrolling the Beeline, which runs from Mesa to Payson, cutting through the Tonto National Forest.
Martin loved being a highway patrol officer, said his widow, Sandi. He believed in writing tickets with a smile, and jumped at the chance to rescue stranded motorists. He always kept panty hose in his patrol car, ready to replace a broken fan belts in a pinch.
“He was just truly happy when he was helping people,” Sandi Martin said. “I always heard that people would thank him when he issued a speeding ticket. He was that kind of guy. You couldn’t not like him.”
About several hours after Martin was shot, Martinez arrived in Blythe.
He was still driving the Monte Carlo, but after racing out of Arizona, he was
low on gas and out of money. Desperate to keep moving, Martinez went to the Day and Nite Mini Mart, a family-owned convenience store on Hobsonway, according to California court documents.
Minutes later, Blythe police got a report of gunshots at the mini mart.
Sgt. Rocky Milano rushed to the store, but found it quiet and empty. He stepped through the door, cautious.
Milano ran around the counter, spotting a man on the ground. Singh, the storekeeper, was lying on his back, with a chair toppled onto him. Someone had shot him in the chest, grabbed a handful of money from the cash register and fled. Blood was oozing through Singh’s shirt, pooling on the floor of the minimart.
“He was in quite a bit of pain,” Milano later told a grand jury, according to county court documents. “He was largely incoherent, but I did ask him if he knew if the suspect was Mexican, black or white. And at one point he said ‘Mexican’ … ‘youth.’”
Singh died several hours later at a nearby hospital. Police were unable to interview him.
Singh, an immigrant from India, worked long shifts at the mini-mart, saving money to bring his wife and daughter to the United States. The store was owned by Singh’s cousin, but Singh managed it carefully, guarding it as if it was his own.
“He was such a gentle, gentle man, always with a smile on his face,” said Carmen Han, a Blythe resident. “He was doing his very best to support his family, which is why it was such a terrible thing, to cut that life short.”
Han, 75, knew Singh through her small accounting firm, which sits not far from the mini-mart, which is now abandoned. Decades ago, Singh would walk down to Han’s office once a week, carrying ledgers from the mini-mart. Singh always arrived after dark, and his knock was so soft that it was barely audible, Han said. During an interview with The Desert
Sun, Han said she assumed Singh’s killer was convicted long ago. She was unaware Martinez is still awaiting trial.
“I will always remember (Singh),” Han said. “But I never knew justice was not done for him.”
As Singh was dying in Blythe, Martinez kept driving. Authorities say Martinez returned to Indio, barricading himself in the trailer where he would eventually be captured.
Today, the pending case against Martinez appears unquestionably strong. According to grand jury transcripts, witnesses have placed Martinez and the stolen Monte Carlo on State Road 87, near the scene of Martin’s death. Other witnesses spotted the same car leaving the mini-mart in Blythe. Police recovered the .38-caliber revolver during the Indio standoff, and later found Martin’s 9-mm pistol hidden in the barricaded trailer. A bullet casing that matches Martin’s pistol was found at the mini-mart in Blythe, suggesting that Martinez shot the store keeper with the officer’s gun. Finally, Martinez’s fingerprints were found on both his revolver and the Monte Carlo.
In addition to the physical evidence, one of Martinez’s friends told police the suspect had confessed. Shortly after the standoff in Indio, Eric Moreno said Martinez called him from jail, bragging and laughing about shooting Martin and Singh.
Moreno has since stopped cooperating with prosecutors, insisting he has no memory of that incriminating phone call.
In Arizona, Martinez’s attorneys have argued that Martinez suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and the traffic stop on Highway 87 triggered a “dissociative state” and instinctual survival response. Martinez claimed he developed PTSD because of his abusive father, who beat him frequently when he was a young boy.
Arizona courts rejected the PTSD argument, sentencing Martinez to death.
Martinez appealed his case to the Arizona Supreme Court and the U.S. District Court of Arizona, but his conviction and sentence were upheld in both courts. Martinez then re-appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2008. The circuit court sent the case back to the district court in 2014, ordering a federal judge to reconsider a few of Martinez’s arguments.
At least one of those arguments was born in a Riverside County jail cell.
To prepare for his local trial, Martinez has reviewed thousands of pages of discovery documents, including hundreds of photographs. Buried in those documents, Martinez found a photograph of the Monte Carlo’s ignition switch, taken by police after Martinez was arrested in 1995. The ignition switch photograph is important because Arizona police testified that the ignition switch was missing, leaving only a “hollow cavity.” During the original trial in Arizona, prosecutors never disclosed the discrepancy.
“The photograph clearly shows a shiny chrome bezel covering the ignition in its appropriate place in the Monte Carlo’s steering column, rather than a hol
low cavity,” Martinez argued in court documents.
Martinez has also argued that his prior attorneys provided an ineffective defense, and therefore he deserves a new trial.
That Arizona District Court appeal continues today. Proceedings will likely extend through the end of the year. Regardless of who wins the case in the district court, the decision will likely be appealed at least one more time, further delaying Martinez’s execution, possibly for several more years.
The prolonged case has been “very frustrating” for Martin’s colleagues, many of whom want to see Martinez executed, said Sgt. Jimmy Chavez, president of the Arizona Highway Patrol Association. During an interview with The Desert
Sun, Chavez said he felt Martinez had abused the legal system by dragging his court cases into “endless continuation.” Chavez was particularly critical of the California court case, and questioned the wisdom of prosecuting a man who was already sentenced to death.