County attorney seals prosecutor’s harassment report
In August, as sexual harassment and other charges against Deputy Maricopa County Attorney Juan Martinez were being investigated by the State Bar of Arizona, submitted a request to the County Attorney’s Office for any of the office’s human resources reports about Martinez.
The request also asked for information about a former media personality with whom he was alleged in Bar complaints to have had an affair. That woman is now working at the County Attorney’s Office.
The office did not acknowledge any investigation at the time and as yet has not complied with either request. The former media personality told a
reporter that what she did at the County Attorney’s Office was none of his business, even though she works for a government agency.
Weeks after the public records request was made, the County Attorney’s Office had 847 documents concerning the Martinez investigation submitted to the State Bar and requested that the material be filed under a protective order.
Presiding Disciplinary Judge William O’Neil, who oversees bar complaints, granted the request.
In recent weeks, County Attorney Bill Montgomery told a reporter that his office recently completed an investigation of internal allegations against Martinez and disciplined him based on the findings. Montgomery did not elaborate.
reiterated its publicrecords request for the documents related to the Martinez investigation after Montgomery confirmed their existence. Amanda Steele, his office’s spokeswoman, replied that she was “aware of the request.” Four days later, she said that they had been subpoenaed by the State Bar.
The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office can be slow to fulfill public records requests and has many documents sealed by courts, but it has in the past turned over personnel files, including files for Martinez.
In February, when stories surfaced about sexual harassment investigations involving an attorney with the county Public Defender’s Office and a defense attorney on contract, the county was quick to divulge details and documents requested by
What is the state Bar investigating?
Earlier in November, the State Bar’s probable cause committee ordered the Bar attorneys to prepare a formal complaint against Martinez. He is alleged to have given false testimony to the Bar and alleged to have revealed the identity of a juror in the second Jodi Arias murder trial, which Martinez prosecuted in 2015.
Dishonesty is a cardinal sin in the legal profession, and if an attorney or a law enforcement officer is found to be untruthful, it casts doubt on all of his or her cases.
And jury identities are protected by law. The media is barred from photographing or identifying jurors without their permission.
Martinez gained national attention and devout fandom from those trials, the first of which was live-streamed in 2013. Arias was convicted of the 2008 murder of her sometime boyfriend, Travis Alexander. But two different juries failed to reach a unanimous verdict on whether to sentence her to death.
Since those trials concluded in 2015, Martinez has been the subject of at least seven bar complaints.
One complaint, which covered a decade’s worth of cases Martinez tried, including Arias, resulted in an offer of probation for Martinez from the Probable Cause Committee, but Martinez opted instead to face a disciplinary hearing.
He was charged with engaging in unprofessional conduct; using means that have no substantial purpose other than to embarrass, delay, or burden any other person, or using methods of obtaining evidence that violate the legal rights of such a person by, among other things, improperly attacking the defendant; and engaging in professional misconduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice.