Allegations against Juan Martinez are costing taxpayers
Controversial Maricopa County prosecutor Juan Martinez is costing county taxpayers thousands of dollars in liability fees every year, according to county public records.
The county provided The Arizona Republic with a report showing it has paid $169,569.29 in professional liability costs for Martinez due to State Bar of Arizona claims since 1999.
According to a county spokesperson, “liability coverage is incurred as a result of errors and omissions in performing professional services.”
And the expenses are expected to continue.
While some of the claims have been closed, others are still open, including one where the county has so far paid $86,500.
Martinez, who earned $146,370 last year, became a household name when he prosecuted murderer Jodi Arias.
He has faced numerous allegations over the years, including allegations of sexual harassment from women in the County Attorney’s Office.
Who is Juan Martinez?
Martinez graduated from Arizona State University’s law school and was admitted into the State Bar in 1984.
He’s worked for the county for decades.
He has been the county’s prosecutor on several high-profile cases:
❚ Arias, who was convicted of killing Travis Alexander in his Mesa home.
❚ Aaron Saucedo, the “serial street shooter” suspect who is accused of killing several people in Phoenix.
❚ Christopher Redondo, who was convicted of killing a Gilbert police officer.
❚ Avtar Grewal, who was found guilty of killing his wife.
❚ Jesus Busso-Estopellan, who was accused of killing two teens during a drug deal. A hung jury led to a mistrial during the death-penalty phase.
State Bar ethics complaint
In March, the State Bar of Arizona filed a formal misconduct complaint against Martinez.
The allegations claim Martinez sexually harassed multiple coworkers in the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office and an employee at the Maricopa Superior Courthouse, had an affair with a blogger during the Jodi Arias trial, and communicated with a juror during the Jodi Arias trial.
Martinez has denied the allegations. In August, Presiding Disciplinary Judge William J. O’Neil threw out the allegations concerning the juror and Martinez’s coworkers.
“When someone creates a hostile working environment and makes a coworker feel uncomfortable, a complaint should be reported,” O’Neil stated in the ruling. “Mr. Martinez was reported and was properly reprimanded for the MCAO allegations.”
According to the State Bar’s complaint, a clerk at the County Attorney’s Office said Martinez told her “he wanted to climb her like a statue, or words to that effect.” The complaint stated Martinez invited her to Las Vegas and said he could guess the color of her underwear.
In 2017, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office investigated the allegations. Former County Attorney Bill Montgomery, who was recently named an Arizona Supreme Court justice, wrote in a letter that Martinez received a written reprimand, mandatory training and was ineligible for performance pay that year.
Montgomery has blocked The Republic from accessing hundreds of pages of Martinez’s “professional standards” records.
Martinez was accused of talking to a juror via text and phone calls after the woman was dismissed from participating in the Arias case. According to the State Bar’s complaint, the woman sent Martinez nude photos, invited him to have meals with her and gave her opinion of other juror’s views.
In his ruling, O’Neil stated, there is no evidence that Martinez ever texted or initiated a phone call. The judge said there is no suggestion Martinez solicited nude photos of the woman.
Claims of using taxpayers’ time
A lawyer who represented Arias recently filed an ethics complaint against Montgomery that included allegations against Martinez, including that Martinez was working on a book during the trial.
Karen Clark, Arias’ attorney, states in the complaint that she interviewed three people who were connected to the blogger accused of having the affair with Martinez, including the blogger’s husband at that time.
According to the complaint, the three told Clark how the blogger worked on the book with Martinez and the nature of their affair.
Martinez worked on the book, “during business hours, and when he was being paid by the taxpayers of Maricopa County,” the complaint stated.
The filings claim that Martinez allowed at least one non-employee into his downtown office to help write the book and use equipment owned by the county.
When asked about the book, Jerry Cobb, a Maricopa County Attorney’s Office spokesman at the time, said employees didn’t need permission to do activities that are protected under the Constitution.
“We received appropriate assurances that Juan Martinez’s off-duty activities will not violate state statutes or restrictions on attorney conduct as found in the ethical rules for attorneys adopted by the Arizona Supreme Court,” he told the Republic in 2015.
Former Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley, who oversaw Martinez at one time, told the Republic at the time that it wasn’t appropriate for a prosecutor to write a book in the midst of a case.
“Until there’s finality in the case, you should never write a book. As long as they were working for me, they would not be able to do that,” he said in 2015.