Martinez hit with new misconduct complaint
Allegation from past 30 days is under investigation
Beleaguered Maricopa County prosecutor Juan Martinez is facing a new misconduct complaint two years after being disciplined for sexually harassing several co-workers.
The Arizona Republic on Thursday requested a copy of any sexual misconduct complaint against Martinez filed in the past 30 days.
The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office confirmed a complaint was under review by the office’s investigative unit. The office spokeswoman called it a personnel matter and declined to make the complaint public.
“I can confirm there is a complaint,” Amanda Steele said. “Yes, it is being looked at.”
Steele said a County Attorney’s Office supervisor was “provided information by an employee they oversee, of a situation that occurred between Mr. Martinez and that employee.”
Steele said the interaction took place and was reported within the past 30 days.
Newly appointed Maricopa County Attorney Allister Adel, who took office Oct. 3, declined comment.
Martinez did not respond to messages left on his office phone and cellphone. The office said he would not comment on the issue.
Appeals challenge in Arias case
The complaint surfaced on the same day the Arizona Court of Appeals considered whether misconduct allegations against Martinez should overturn his most celebrated criminal conviction.
Lawyers for Jodi Arias, who in 2008 murdered her sometime boyfriend Travis Alexander, argued Thursday that Martinez violated so many rules her conviction should be thrown out.
Lawyers for the state conceded that while Martinez violated some ethical rules, it didn’t alter the outcome of the trial. Arias, who is now 39, was sentenced to life in prison in 2015 after two juries failed to agree on the death penalty.
History of complaints, discipline
Martinez for years has been dogged by allegations of sexual harassment and other allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.
He has been investigated multiple times by the State Bar of Arizona for ethical violations, resulting in a byzantine series of open investigations, appeals and dismissals.
Misconduct complaints against Martinez have ensnared his old boss, former Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, who in September was appointed to the Arizona Supreme Court.
An ethics complaint filed by lawyers for Arias last month accused Montgomery of allowing Martinez to engage in unethical conduct during the trial and taking steps to make sure the public would not find out about it. Montgomery has denied the allegations, which he contends are politically motivated.
Attorney Karen Clark, special counsel for Arias, said Montgomery failed to supervise Martinez. She alleges he blocked public records from being released, including personnel records and depositions of county employees who complained Martinez sexually harassed them.
In 2017, Martinez was reprimanded, denied a bonus and ordered to undergo sexual harassment training after an internal investigation by the county.
The MCAO investigation took more than five months and involved interviews with 30 current and former county employees, according to Montgomery.
Montgomery has not released more than 800 pages of documents related to the internal investigation. He said his office made an agreement with the Bar to seek a protective order for the records in order to expedite the Bar’s investigation of the harassment claims.
In other words, sealing the documents meant investigators could examine them without worrying private information would be publicly disclosed.
Presiding Disciplinary Judge William J. O’Neil, who is appointed by the Arizona Supreme Court and is overseeing the case against Martinez, said in 2018 the records were sealed at the request of Montgomery’s office.
The records have remained sealed even after O’Neil dismissed ethics charges against Martinez involving sexual harassment at the County Attorney’s Office.
O’Neil said allegations of creating a hostile work environment were dealt with internally by Montgomery. O’Neil also tossed charges that Martinez had inappropriate and sexually explicit communications with a juror released from the Arias trial.
Bar charges pending
O’Neil did not let Martinez off the hook completely. He still faces Bar charges on allegations he provided information to a blogger covering the Arias case, giving false testimony during an investigation and making sexual remarks to a Maricopa County Superior Court employee.
A new ethics complaint by Clark in September accused Martinez of additional misconduct stemming from the Arias trial. He is accused of writing his tell-all book about the Arias case while the trials were unfolding.
Lawyers for Arias have also accused Martinez of giving a blogger and a media personality unprecedented access to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office and case files during the trial.
The complaints, discipline, investigations and appeals did not cost Martinez his coveted assignment. He remained the county’s office most high-profile prosecutor in its capital litigation bureau.
That changed last month. About three weeks after Montgomery left office, then-chief deputy and interim county attorney Rachel Mitchell announced Martinez no longer would handle death-penalty cases and had been reassigned to the office’s auto theft division.