FROM STAR, TO FIRED
IN COURT, HE WON THE BIGGEST CASES. BUT WHISPERS OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT ALLEGATIONS FOLLOWED JUAN MARTINEZ
For more than 30 years, Juan Martinez has gone after the bad guys as one of Maricopa County’s top prosecutors, earning a reputation as a tough, uncompromising litigator.
For nearly as long, Martinez allegedly has gone after women in the legal community, earning a reputation as a crude, intimidating harasser.
Law clerks, courthouse staff and attorneys on the opposite side of cases all described Martinez’s unwanted advances and inappropriate conduct.
They say he groped, humiliated and pursued them. They say he stroked a judicial assistant’s arms, grabbed a law clerk’s waist and once touched an attorney’s butt during a trial.
The attorney said Martinez laughed, raised his hands and replied, “Oops.”
Women for years complained to each other about Martinez’s sexually suggestive remarks.
Few tried to report him. They feared that Martinez, who had become a household name for prosecuting Jodi Arias and other high-profile murderers, was too powerful, too prominent and too connected to be formally disciplined.
“I assumed if I ignored his unprofessional behavior and sexual come-ons, he’d stop. He didn’t.” Christine Bannon
Prosecutor for the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office who later came forward with sexual harrasment allegations against Juan Martinez
Women said they endured Martinez: The subtle comments about their weight and appearance. The long, lingering looks and blatant come-ons. Invitations to lunch or to Las Vegas. Pleas to leave their husbands and boyfriends. Verbal fantasies about what he’d like to do to them.
They said Martinez offered to guess the color of their underwear, told them he wanted to climb them like trees or statutes and gave them nicknames such as “Deep Throat.”
Three women say he told them on separate occasions: “I f--- a lot of women in this courthouse, and you’re going to be one of them”; “Those are nice stilettos. I’d like to see them up close”; and “You have a nice voice. You’d make a great phone sex operator.”
An investigation by The Arizona Republic documented the accounts of 17 women who say Martinez harassed or mistreated them in various ways. They include law clerks, judicial assistants, a prosecutor, a defense attorney, two jurors, a trial blogger and a probation supervisor.
Their accounts come from interviews, personnel records, ethics charges to the State Bar of Arizona, legal filings and internal documents from the County Attorney’s Office.
Complaints go back to 1990, when Martinez was a newly minted deputy county attorney. While supervisors lauded him as one of the office’s most successful trial lawyers, he left a whisper trail of sexual harassment allegations through the administrations of four county attorneys.
Allegations of misbehavior — sexual harassment, lying in court, disobeying judges, lashing out at a female defense attorney — for years went largely unchecked by those best positioned to stop it, records show.
County attorneys overlooked conduct that could have gotten someone fired in the private sector.
Judges overseeing trials didn’t hold Martinez accountable for salacious remarks and courtroom antics that could have resulted in sanctions for other lawyers.
And the State Bar, charged with regulating attorneys, routinely dropped charges against Martinez. It recommended dismissing more than a dozen allegations of sexual harassment, ethical violations or prosecutorial misconduct since 2013.
Among the charges the Bar initially wrote off for lack of evidence were allegations of sexual misconduct in the Arias trial that led directly to Martinez’s disbarment in July.
He agreed to be disbarred July 17, two days after the Arizona Supreme Court ordered a hearing on allegations that Martinez sexually harassed co-workers for years at the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.
The Arizona Republic in February asked newly appointed County Attorney Allister Adel to respond to misconduct allegations involving Martinez that spanned three decades.
Two weeks later, she notified Martinez she intended to fire him for an alleged pattern of unprofessional conduct. Adel alleged he harassed and retaliated against two women who had previously complained about him. She fired him Feb. 21.
“Any inappropriate behavior, any harassment, workplace, sexual or otherwise will absolutely not be tolerated,” Adel told The Republic after Martinez was disbarred in July. “The women in the office need to feel safe where they work. They need to know we are taking care of them, protecting them and empowering them.”
Adel would not comment on Martinez’s history at the County Attorney’s Office before her arrival or about decisions her predecessors made to advance his career.
Martinez has categorically denied sexually harassing women and is appealing his termination. In legal filings, he claims women either lied about what happened or misconstrued his intent.
Martinez and his attorneys declined to talk to The Republic for this article. His lawyer, Donald Wilson Jr. of Phoenix, hung up the phone when asked to comment.
“I respectfully decline your invitation,” Wilson said in answer to an email offering to provide written questions to his client.
Wilson acknowledged in legal letters and filings Martinez used words like “cute,” “pretty” and “Deep Throat” in his conversations with women but contends these were innocent exchanges.
The women described a similar pattern of harassment that began with lingering looks, invasion of personal space, uncomfortable conversations that included too much personal information. That led to intimate invites, sexual innuendos, touching and denials, they allege.
None of the women accused Martinez of sexual assault.
“I don’t think there is a woman in the courthouse that he hasn’t harassed,” said Sally Hawley, a former judicial assistant at Maricopa County Superior Court. “It’s been going on for 20 years, and nobody does anything.”
Hawley is one of 11 women who shared their claims of harassment or mistreatment with The Republic. Some worked with Martinez at the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. Others encountered him at the courthouse or during trials.
Martinez is known as an aggressive prosecutor who pushes the envelope to win convictions. Defense attorneys for years accused him of hiding evidence, making false claims in court and violating court orders. Their complaints to judges and filings to the State Bar were routinely written off, and their legal appeals did not result in censures or new trials.
Martinez has denied wrongdoing, sometimes apologizing for heat-of-themoment arguments as part of his passionate pursuit of justice. Others, he dismissed as gripes by losing adversaries.
Colleagues in the legal community gave Martinez the sobriquet “Teflon Juan” for his ability to avoid discipline on prosecutorial misconduct complaints.
Martinez fought complaints about his trial style, but for years he wasn’t called out publicly for his alleged mistreatment of women.
That changed with Arias, the diminutive Mormon convert who shot, stabbed and cut her boyfriend’s throat inside his suburban Mesa home. The hypersexualized case, beginning in 2013 and continuing over two years, built on lurid photos, explicit audiotapes and salacious testimony, became Arizona’s most sensational trial in decades.
Martinez won a conviction, guaranteeing life in prison for Arias — and fame for himself. While he didn’t get Arias the death penalty, he got a starring role in crime-time reality shows. He got a book deal and celebrity status.
But in the crucible of the Arias spectacle, questions about his own behavior became part of the public record. Martinez was accused in legal filings of trying to influence the verdict by sleeping with a married trial blogger and sexting a former juror who sent him nude photos of herself. A court clerk said Martinez sexually harassed her.
After that information came to light, women who had for years quietly traded stories about encounters with Martinez started coming forward.
They talked to lawyers, to supervisors, to investigators. They put their names on complaints, signed affidavits and sat for depositions.
They said they wanted accountability.
Defense attorney says Martinez harassed her regularly: ‘I felt his hands on my butt’
It took Christine Bannon 20 years to come forward with sexual harassment allegations against Martinez.
She knew Martinez only by reputation when they squared off over a criminal case in the late 1990s.
Bannon and Martinez weren’t friends. They didn’t socialize. They didn’t interact outside the courtroom.
She was a defense attorney assigned to represent a murder suspect. He was the prosecutor.
That didn’t stop Martinez from sexually harassing her on a regular basis, she said. He told her she should leave her husband; asked when they were going to have an affair; commented on her long legs and high heels; trolled her with his eyes — and then he touched her.
“In court, we were asked to approach the bench,” Bannon wrote in a 2019 letter to the State Bar of Arizona. “I rose from the defense counsel table … Mr. Martinez stepped in behind me. I felt his hands on my butt.”
Bannon said she stopped in her tracks and turned to face Martinez “with a shocked, ‘What are you doing?’ look.” She said Martinez raised his hands and laughed like he’d made a mistake. She said he gave her his own look: Oops.
Bannon, who now works as a prosecutor for the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office, said Martinez left her feeling “demeaned, objectified and uncomfortable.”
“The manner in which he leered at my body, the remarks he made, the buttgrabbing, and the fact that he felt entitled to sexualize me … is indeed unprofessional and sexually harassing behavior,” Bannon said in her letter.
Bannon’s decision to come forward followed reports she read of other women who said they were harassed by Martinez, which she said mirrored her own experiences.
Bannon said she “was dumbstruck by the similarity of the description of Mr. Martinez’s sexually harassing behavior” against the women.
“I chose to no longer stay silent,” Bannon said.
Martinez told the Bar none of it happened.
“It seems more than a little unfair to require Mr. Martinez to now defend against events which allegedly took place more than 20 years ago,” Wilson wrote in a 2019 letter to the Bar. “Nevertheless, Mr. Martinez denies staring, leering, touching or butt grabbing with respect to (Bannon).”
Wilson said Bannon’s allegations defy common sense. He said there were more than a dozen witnesses, including jurors, courtroom staff and other lawyers, none of whom reported the alleged incidents to the judge.
“Mr. Martinez recalls his single case interaction with (Bannon), but he recalls it dramatically different … because what she alleges never happened,” Wilson said in his letter.
Martinez minimized Bannon’s role in the trial, describing her as a “second chair defense attorney,” who could not make any decisions without first consulting the lead attorney.
“Mr. Martinez never spoke alone with (Bannon), and never had any telephone or social contact with (her),” Martinez’s lawyer said.
Bannon was helping to represent Jerri Lynn Thomas, who was arrested in 1997 on suspicion of strangling her 9year-old son with a belt to prevent the boy’s father from taking custody. Thomas was convicted in 1999 and sentenced to life in prison.
Martinez said Bannon waited two decades to file an ethics charge as a form of payback for losing the case.
“During the trial Mr. Martinez outfoxed the Complainant and her co-counsel, and they were enraged,” Martinez’s lawyer said.
Bannon acknowledged in her letter that she did not report the incidents at the time.
“I did not want to be wrongly perceived as ‘overly sensitive’ or ‘humorless,’ a ‘drama queen,’ or some sort of ‘shrinking violet’ in a profession that requires mental toughness, so I tolerated his behavior,” she said.
The Bar recommended discipline and asked the Arizona Supreme Court’s Attorney Discipline Probable Cause Committee to initiate formal proceedings against Martinez.
But the committee, whose members are appointed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, sided with Martinez. It dismissed Bannon’s allegations in 2019, citing “the lapse of time since the alleged misconduct and the lack of corroborating evidence.”
Bannon said she never experienced anything like what Martinez did to her. She said being a prosecutor has taught her “there is credibility in the multitude of disparate accounts involving the same person over time, and among victims who have no connection to one another.”
She told the Bar that Martinez taught her another lesson.
“I assumed if I ignored his unprofessional behavior and sexual come-ons, he’d stop,” she said. “He didn’t.”
Women at the courthouse allege harassment: ‘Juan’s been doing this for 25 years’
Martinez’s behavior toward women rarely was challenged, interviews and records show.
In courtrooms, where his misogynistic remarks and questionable conduct became part of trial records, judges rarely called him out.
In court offices and hallways, where judicial assistants, court reporters and other staffers say Martinez cornered them with unwanted advances, administrators didn’t raise red flags.
Even when Martinez’s conduct became fodder for lunchtime discussions among judges and court staff, officials didn’t make formal complaints.
“He was one of these guys who had the propensity to constantly ask people out. He didn’t care if they were married, unmarried or dating,” retired Maricopa Superior Court Judge Roland Steinle III told The Republic.
Steinle said he heard from judicial assistants and court staffers about Martinez’s advances over the years, but nothing rose to the level of a serious complaint. Rather, it was just brought up in conversation, often with a chuckle.
“It was, ‘Juan is just being Juan again,’” he said.
Steinle, who served on the bench from 2001-2016, said stories about Martinez’s advances to women circulated from Martinez’s days at the court’s southeast division in Mesa.
Among the women who brought up Martinez was a court reporter assigned to Steinle’s division. Steinle said she told him Martinez kept asking her out even after she told him she was married.
“I don’t think anyone ever came to me and said, ‘Judge, I really have a problem,’“Steinle said. “If someone would have said something about having a serious problem with Juan Martinez, I would have done something about it.”
At least three court employees had problems with Martinez, including one who said she was forced to retire after complaining to a judge. The women accused Martinez of sexual harassment in a filing with the State Bar years after the alleged incidents occurred.
The Bar in 2018 recommended dismissing allegations made by two of the
women.
“Nothing ever happens to this man … Juan’s been doing this for 25 years, at least,” former judicial assistant Janet Wiebelhaus said. “There’s probably more women that he’s harassed than not.”
Wiebelhaus was one of the three women who took their stories to the Bar. She said Martinez harassed her three times between 2008 and 2013, when she was working for Judge Sherry Stephens, who presided over the Arias trials.
She said one encounter occurred in the vestibule between the courtroom and the hallway. Wiebelhaus said Martinez came up behind her, put his hands on her upper arms and while rubbing up and down, said: “You know what the media calls you? Deep Throat?”
Wiebelhaus said she quickly reported what happened to Stephens. She said the judge was dismissive, disinterested.
“She said, ‘Oh, Juan. He is just so unpredictable,’” Wiebelhaus said. “I will never forget those words. I said, ‘OK, then,’ and walked out.”
On another occasion, Wiebelhaus said Martinez walked into her office and told her she should quit her day job because she had a nice voice and would make more money as a phone sex operator.
“You dismiss stuff, tell yourself, ‘It’s just Juan,’” Wiebelhaus said. “He can get away with it. He knows how to do it. He knows how to play the system.”
But Wiebelhaus said she couldn’t let it go, telling others how Stephens reacted when she’d first reported the “Deep Throat” comment. She said she is sure that is why Stephens forced her from her job without explanation in 2016. Wiebelhaus said she was given the choice to take retirement or be terminated.
“We are at-will employees,” Wiebelhaus said. “Everybody knows that if you stir up stuff, you will lose your job … If we report anything, we will get terminated.”
Stephens told The Republic she could not comment on Martinez, citing ongoing appeals in the Arias case.
However, according to Martinez’s lawyer, Stephens said she never observed Martinez say or do anything sexually inappropriate to any court staff member. Stephens also disputed claims made by Wiebelhaus, Wilson wrote in a 2018 letter to the State Bar.
“Ms. Wiebelhaus claims she spoke with Judge Sherry Stephens,” Wilson wrote. “Judge Stephens has been interviewed, and she has no memory of that having ever occurred.”
Stephens was told after the Arias trial “about some vague notion” that Wiebelhaus was uncomfortable around Martinez, Wilson said. “But Judge Stephens was never told about the allegations Ms. Wiebelhaus now makes.”
Wilson said the incidents Wiebelhaus described never happened. In his letter to the Bar, he said Wiebelhaus chose to associate “Deep Throat” with the pornographic movie rather than the famous source for Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in the Watergate investigation.
“Whatever the context Ms. Wiebelhaus chose to employ, Mr. Martinez denies ever having said any of those remarks or otherwise flirting with her,” Wilson said, adding Wiebelhaus might have had motive to make trouble for Martinez: her sympathy for Arias.
According to Wilson, Wiebelhaus confronted Martinez during his lunchtime workout at the court’s wellness center, telling him he should stop trying to prosecute Arias for murder and allow her to plead guilty to manslaughter.
“Ms. Wiebelhaus’ remarks were totally inappropriate and made Mr. Martinez very uncomfortable,” Wilson said. “He never returned to his regular lunchtime workouts at the wellness center so as to avoid further contact with Ms. Wiebelhaus.”
Wiebelhaus said Wilson’s account “was absolutely not true” and makes no sense.
“We worked out at the courthouse, but we never talked, because there was a trial,” she said. “I would never talk to Martinez during a workout. I probably would have said, ‘Hi.’ To work out with him and talk about an ongoing trial, absolutely not.”
Wiebelhaus said she can’t believe Stephens would say she doesn’t remember her report of sexual harassment by Martinez.
“I absolutely told her,” Wiebelhaus said. “Something like that, that’s just one thing that you remember … Stephens dismissed what I said.”
The Bar recommended dismissal of Wiebelhaus’ allegations.
Court reporter claims he spoke quietly in her ear: ‘I like the person that’s in the skirt’
Martinez accused another court staffer who worked on the Arias trial of making up “wholly contrived” allegations of sexual harassment.
Former county court reporter Marla Knox said the prosecutor stared at her in ways that made her uncomfortable and commented almost daily on her skirts, shoes and appearance.
Martinez also touched her back on two occasions, resting his hand near her shoulder blade as he leaned over and spoke quietly in her ear, she said in a legal filing.
During the Arias trial, Martinez told her, “I like the person that’s in the skirt” and “I’d really like to see what’s inside.” After the Arias case ended and she saw him at another trial, Knox said Martinez told her, “I really miss those skirts.”
Knox, who detailed those allegations in a Bar filing, told The Republic that Martinez’s reputation for making inappropriate comments was common knowledge in the courthouse.
“Everybody knew this was going on,” she said.
Knox worked the second penalty phase of the Arias trial. She said Martinez would make comments before court started for the day as staff members awaited the arrival of the judge and jury. She would ignore him, look down, pretend to be busy.
She said she switched shifts with another court reporter to avoid Martinez.
“It kind of makes you feel like you’re not being treated like a professional,” said Knox, who now works as a federal court reporter. “It just was demeaning and degrading.”
Knox didn’t say anything to supervisors because “at the time, I was a single mom with three girls, and I was on one of the biggest cases of my career.”
Martinez’s attorney said he never made any of the remarks, which he nonetheless described as complimentary. He said Martinez avoided “rubbing elbows” with court staff.
Wilson said it was “interesting, too, that Ms. Knox never voiced a complaint to Mr. Martinez or to the Maricopa County Superior Court Human Resources Department.”
He also said she was “very capable” of making up stories. He claimed Knox was fired for concocting a story about being ill after she was denied time off.
Knox disputes Wilson’s version. She said her time off was approved, and then she was told her services were no longer needed. She said she never made up any story.
Her attorney said Knox was an at-will employee and was not fired for cause.
The Bar recommended discipline for Martinez in the Knox case. Hers is the only allegation against Martinez since 2013 that never was dismissed by those in charge of the attorney discipline process.
Martinez was fighting to get the complaint thrown out when he agreed to be disbarred.
Prosecutor rejects, downplays and attacks his accusers
Martinez attacked sexual harassment allegations with the same determination that made him such a fearsome prosecutor. He also challenged the women who made the complaints.
Martinez went after their credibility as he would cross-examine a defendant.
In rebuttals to supervisors, court filings and letters to investigators, Martinez denied ever doing anything inappropriate in the workplace — or anywhere else.
Records obtained by The Republic revealed a pattern to his defense:
He first rejected the allegations and contended incidents never happened. He then sought to minimize the alleged misconduct as misunderstandings; comments taken out of context, friendly banter misinterpreted. He next called the women liars and claimed they made up stories of harassment.
Finally, Martinez presented scenarios in which the women were out to get him over some perceived grudge, however insignificant.
Take Hawley’s allegations to the Bar. The former judicial assistant came forward with Wiebelhaus and Knox, saying Martinez bluntly propositioned her years earlier. Hawley said Martinez told her he’d had sex with a lot of women in the courthouse and she was going to be one of them.
“Mr. Martinez categorically denies that the sentence was ever spoken,” Wilson wrote in a letter to the State Bar of Arizona. “The remark is coarse, hardly flirtatious, and not something Mr. Martinez would ever say to anyone.”
Wilson challenged Hawley’s veracity with identical language he used to dispute harassment claims made by other women.
He said the incident couldn’t have happened the way Hawley reported it because there would have been too many witnesses.
Prosecutors and court reporters are rarely alone in a courtroom, Wilson said. The defendant, defense attorneys, prosecutors, a bailiff, a court clerk and “a jury box of chained, jailed defendants” all would have been within earshot. And none reported hearing such comments, he said.
Hawley had reason to go after Martinez, Wilson said. Hawley in 2014 asked Martinez to send something to her “Aunt Pookie” in Tulsa because of his fame as a prosecutor.
Hawley asked him again in 2015 to send a card to her aunt, Wilson said.
“Mr. Martinez did not go out and buy a card to send to Aunt Pookie, who I’m sure was disappointed,” Wilson said. “I’m sure Ms. Hawley was put out.”
Wilson argued even if Martinez made the remark to Hawley, it wouldn’t be an ethical violation.
Wilson made the same argument for things Martinez was accused of saying or doing to other women, including touching them, referring to them as “Deep Throat,” flirting, staring at them, telling them they looked pretty or that he’d like to see what was inside their skirts.
None of that would violate the State Bar’s unprofessional conduct rule, Wilson said.
“Staring, looking, flirting and complimenting someone’s appearance can never be considered offensive,” Wilson said, adding that neither could touching someone on the back, “particularly when the person doing the touching has never been advised and has no reason to believe that it may be unwanted.”
The Bar recommended dismissal of Hawley’s claims.
Another aspect of Martinez’s defense was to selectively quote what some women said during interviews, The Republic found.
The effect was to make it appear the women didn’t have a legitimate complaint or didn’t voice any concern at all about Martinez.
In a 2018 letter to the Bar, Wilson quoted 16 women saying they had never seen, heard or experienced Martinez acting inappropriately. But The Republic found context was omitted from at least six of the statements that painted Martinez’s behavior in a different light.
For instance, Wilson told the Bar a Maricopa County Attorney’s Office law clerk found it difficult to characterize Martinez’s conduct as offensive and had no knowledge that he did anything improper.
Records, however, show she also told county investigators Martinez said he wanted to climb her like a statue, offered to guess the color of her underwear and, while she was present, invited another clerk to accompany him to Las Vegas.
The clerk said she agreed to help her co-worker hide from Martinez.
Wilson quoted another law clerk as saying she didn’t remember Martinez making any sexually related comments to her.
But the clerk did report to investigators that Martinez grabbed her from behind, invaded her personal space and often stared at women’s chests.
Wilson highlighted another law clerk’s statements in Martinez’s defense, saying she never experienced any outright sexual advance by Martinez, who “would just do things like sit on my desk in the cubicle while I was typing.”
The same law clerk actually said Martinez asked her to lunch about 10 times, told her very personal stories about his first wife and father and talked about the nude photos and other gifts he received during the Arias trial.
The clerk said she would hide in the bathroom to avoid Martinez.
Wilson claimed in his letter to the Bar that most of the interviews conducted by county investigators failed to establish any wrongdoing by Martinez.
“Fully half of the interviews were either neutral or resulted in good things to say about Mr. Martinez,” Wilson wrote.
But one of the law clerks who spoke to The Republic said her words were taken completely out of context, so much so that the truth of her claims was lost.
2 years into his job, Martinez was threatened with termination
Allegations of inappropriate behavior didn’t slowly become a problem for Martinez at the County Attorney’s Office. They almost always were one.
Two years after he was hired, Martinez’s supervisors counseled him over the amount of time he spent with female employees, specifically office secretaries.
Martinez’s contact with the women was “inappropriate for a professional law office,” according to a 1991 performance evaluation. Supervisors told Martinez he was “interfering with their productivity, and thus it was adversely affecting other attorneys.”
Supervisors rated his attitude toward co-workers as “marginal.”
“His judgment on matters relating to his conduct and personal relationships with other employees, particularly some females, has been called into question on a couple of occasions,” then-unit chief Steve Windtberg wrote.
A few weeks after being counseled in November 1990, Martinez had a secretary in his office, “apparently not entirely on work related subjects,” Windtberg said in the evaluation.
Then in March 1991, another supervisor disciplined Martinez for making “an inappropriate sexual remark toward a female attorney” in the office. Martinez received a written reprimand, and the supervisor warned if his behavior didn’t stop “once and for all,” Martinez would face “further disciplinary action, up to and including termination.”
Windtberg nonetheless gave Martinez an “excellent” overall performance rating. He said Martinez took immediate steps to stop the inappropriate behavior and no longer perceived “this particular conduct” as a problem.
“Juan is fully aware of the potential problems, and he has made conscious efforts to avoid the situations,” Windtberg said in the evaluation.
On paper, it appeared Windtberg was right. Martinez remained reprimandfree for the next 27 years. His evaluations reflected advancements, commendations and the highest professional ratings year after year. He got raises, both in salary and stature.
“Juan is an excellent trial attorney, a valuable asset to the office, and a man that can be relied on to get the job done without complaint,” a supervisor wrote in 1998.
But several women who encountered Martinez over the next two decades said while his evaluations may not have reflected it, his conduct didn’t change.
Law clerks kept watch at the County Attorney’s Office: ‘Juan’s coming’
Some law clerks said they would scatter when they knew Martinez was coming. They fled to other offices. Hid in the bathroom. Crossed to the other side of the street.
They created a cubicle warning system to alert one another to his approach. The words “Juan’s coming” gave them time to get busy or get away.
Clerks would share comments with each other about Martinez’s inappropriate behavior. The anecdotes they passed around in conversation and texts came to be known as the “JM s--- list.”
Most clerks in the office were in their mid- to late 20s, decades younger than the 64-year-old Martinez. They were in law school or had graduated and were awaiting their Bar exam results.
Serving as a law clerk at the nation’s third-largest prosecutorial agency was an important professional steppingstone. They assisted attorneys with legal
research and writing. They were impressionable and eager to get hired.
Three former law clerks, who worked in the County Attorney’s Office in the past five years, spoke exclusively with The Republic on the condition their names not be published for fear of retaliation.
The incidents they described are recent; the embarrassment, discomfort and anxiety brought on by their encounters with Martinez fresh enough to make them worry about potential fallout.
They said they feared being labeled as troublemakers in Maricopa County’s patriarchal legal community. They said if their names become known, they could face reprisals by supervisors, judges and other lawyers.
One former clerk told The Republic she was warned by another clerk shortly after she started work to “watch out” for Martinez. She was told he always picked a favorite clerk, always a female.
Martinez got too close to her when he made requests for help, she said. He invaded her personal space in a way that was uncharacteristic of other attorneys.
Another former clerk said Martinez would touch her shoulder or lower back. The touching wasn’t sexual, she said. But it was unwelcome and unwanted.
“I think his MO is how much can I get away with without crossing the line: touching your back or your shoulder or the small of your back,” she said.
Martinez also was known for “trapping” people in lengthy conversation, she said, and then, “you’d receive an unwanted commentary on ‘how that dress looks good on you’ and things like that,” she said.
Clerks said comments would become progressively more personal before shifting to queries about their relationships.
Martinez got a ‘slap on the wrist,’ according to women forced to come forward in investigation
The law clerks hadn’t planned to come forward. They never sought to file official complaints.
They wanted no part of a public inquiry. Even if their bosses acted on their complaints, they still feared Martinez might be able to harass them and retaliate against them, they said.
But in December 2017, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office launched an internal investigation into harassment allegations against Martinez dating back to 2007. The investigation came after a male attorney reported the allegations of female staffers.
The three clerks and a prosecutor were among a group of 30 Maricopa County Attorney’s Office employees questioned by the Professional Standards Bureau, which handles complaints against employees.
None of the women came forward on her own. Even in the emerging days of #MeToo — as sexual harassment allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein sparked a social movement — the women said they did not feel comfortable initiating complaints about Martinez.
The clerks said they were afraid to report Martinez’s behavior to supervisors. They said they feared nothing would be done even if they spoke up.
“Nobody really wanted to say anything,” one of them said. “We were too scared we wouldn’t get hired.”
One by one, the law clerks got called into interviews. Investigators wanted to know whether Martinez said anything or did anything inappropriate, whether there was a pattern.
The clerks said they were made to sign a document, agreeing to answer questions truthfully or face discipline, including possible termination. They said they were warned not to talk about the investigation to others.
One former clerk said she felt boxed in: Talk or you’re fired; tell anyone about the investigation and you’re fired.
Their concerns over the investigation proved prescient.
Martinez in 2018 received a written reprimand and had to watch a webinar on sexual harassment. He kept his job, his position and continued working with the same employees who had been interviewed.
Martinez did not appeal the reprimand. His attorney said Martinez believed if he accepted the discipline, he would be able to move on with his career. Wilson described the discipline as a “scolding” and said Martinez didn’t accept the findings.
“Mr. Martinez did then and does now believe that the warning was inappropriate,” Wilson said in a letter to the State Bar about the county’s investigation. He called it a “modern day inquisition” and said investigators attempted to discredit Martinez from the outset.
None of the women ever told Martinez his conduct was offensive or that it made them uncomfortable, Wilson said.
Former County Attorney Bill Montgomery, who initiated the investigation, made sure the public wouldn’t see the findings.
He sought to seal the records, and the judge in charge of attorney discipline approved. Two years after the investigation was concluded, the records remain sealed.
Montgomery declined to speak to The Republic about Martinez, the investigation or the accusations of sexual harassment in the County Attorney’s Office.
Before being appointed as an Arizona Supreme Court justice and leaving the prosecutor’s office in 2019, Montgomery promised similar conduct wouldn’t happen again.
But that wasn’t the end of the case for the law clerks. The Bar subpoenaed the county’s investigation and deposed several county employees as part of a separate ethics investigation into Martinez’s conduct.
The women once again were compelled to tell their stories.
In March 2019, the Bar filed a formal misconduct complaint against Martinez accusing him of harassing Maricopa County employees and summarized each woman’s account.
Martinez was accused of “making inappropriate comments … of a sexual nature, engaging in unwanted touching and making persistent unwelcome invitations to go to lunch or a date,” State Bar records show.
Judge William O’Neil, appointed by the Arizona Supreme Court to adjudicate attorney discipline, dismissed allegations of sexual harassment involving the law clerks.
O’Neil said in a 2019 ruling issues of workplace harassment should be handled by the employer, not by a court in a disciplinary hearing. He said Martinez was properly reprimanded.
The Bar appealed to the Arizona Supreme Court, which in July reversed O’Neil’s decision.
Although O’Neil had sealed the county’s internal investigation and redacted the names of employees from court records, the women weren’t protected. The Bar publicly identified eight of the women by name in a 2019 legal filing, including the three former clerks who spoke to The Republic.
The former law clerks who spoke to The Republic equated the reprimand to a slap on the wrist. Martinez should have been fired, they said.
One described it as “just another win” for the prosecutor.
Phoenix attorney unearthed history of allegations but wasn’t looking to make a #MeToo statement
Sexual harassment allegations against Martinez might have remained the stuff of texts and whispered conversations if not for Phoenix attorney Karen Clark.
Her work spurred several women to come forward with claims of sexual harassment, led to explosive accusations about Martinez’s conduct in the Arias case, launched multiple reports to the State Bar, and prompted investigations.
Clark didn’t set out to explore Martinez’s past or dig up allegations of misconduct. In fact, she didn’t plan on investigating Martinez at all.
Clark, who is an expert in legal ethics, was hired by Arias in 2016 to investigate the lawyer who represented her during her murder trials. The lawyer had written a tell-all book that Arias claimed violated client confidentiality. Clark filed a State Bar charge that led to the lawyer’s disbarment.
Arias at the time wasn’t claiming Martinez did anything wrong. As Clark examined what occurred during Arias’ criminal trial and two subsequent death penalty trials, Clark said she was repeatedly steered to Martinez.
“I got tipped off about his alleged conduct,” Clark said. “The tips didn’t come from Jodi Arias. How would she know anything about that? I was hearing from other women, other attorneys.”
Clark’s initial inquiries centered on an allegation that Martinez had an affair with a married blogger covering the sec
ond death penalty trial and may have used that relationship to try to sway the trial’s outcome.
In 2017, Clark filed a charge with the State Bar alleging Martinez engaged in improper conduct with two women covering the trial: one a blogger, the other a correspondent for the TV personality Dr. Drew.
Clark presented evidence to the Bar suggesting the relationships served as a quid pro quo: The women benefited from special trial access. And Martinez leaked exclusive information to the women he hoped would influence the trial, including the identity of the lone juror holding out against the death penalty.
The Bar dismissed the complaint in 2018. Clark objected and filed a supplement that included interviews with the blogger’s husband and the blogger’s former business partner, who corroborated the affair. She also interviewed a former juror who said she began sexting Martinez after she was dismissed but while the trial was ongoing.
“That’s when the floodgates opened,” Clark said.
She started getting calls alleging Martinez harassed courthouse employees, including staff assigned to the Arias trial.
“People were telling me it was the worst-kept secret at the courthouse,” Clark said. “People were telling me it was easier to get a list of the women he had not hit on at the courthouse.”
Clark said she filed another supplement, presenting evidence from several women who claimed Martinez engaged in a pattern of sexual harassment at the courthouse.
The committee overseeing lawyer discipline for the state Supreme Court reversed the Bar’s dismissal of Clark’s complaint and ordered a separate investigation into the courthouse harassment allegations.
Clark filed a separate charge with the State Bar on behalf of Wiebelhaus, Knox and Hawley, the three courthouse employees.
“It kept mushrooming, people kept contacting me,” she said. “I eventually had the names of 18 women that I turned over to the Bar.”
After reconsidering the charges, the Bar moved forward with a complaint. The Bar alleged Martinez leaked confidential information to the blogger, lied to investigators about his relationship with her and had an improper relationship with the dismissed juror.
It recommended dismissing the charge involving the Dr. Drew correspondent. O’Neil reviewed the allegations and tossed out the one involving the dismissed juror. The two charges on his relationship with the blogger were pending when Martinez agreed to disbarment.
Clark said she had no idea in 2018 that women at the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office were telling their own stories about Martinez to county investigators.
“Nothing would have ever happened to Martinez,” she said, referring to those responsible for attorney discipline. “The serious conduct involving the Arias trial led other allegations to come to light … The Bar had dismissed the charges. They weren’t going to do anything.”
Clark wasn’t done filing charges. In 2019 she alleged Martinez violated ethics rules by writing a book about the Arias case as the trial unfolded. She also accused Montgomery of failing to properly supervise Martinez. The charges were pending when Martinez was disbarred.
“Martinez’s personnel file showed instead of training him or counseling him or disciplining him, his office was promoting him, giving him raises and saying ‘attaboy,’” Clark said.
When appellate court judges contended Martinez engaged in prosecutorial misconduct during criminal trials, the County Attorney’s Office would not hold him accountable, Clark said.
Clark said she wasn’t trying to make some #MeToo statement in filing complaints against Martinez. She said evidence indicated he regularly engaged in acts of sexual harassment. But in the Arias case, he used sex to manipulate the justice system, she said.
“The evidence I provided to the State Bar alleged that he was using women to get a death sentence against Jodi Arias,” Clark said. “A death penalty that eluded him.”
She said prosecutors have a duty to ensure justice is served, not to get a conviction any way possible.
“It is alleged Martinez violated that duty in the worst way,” Clark said. “That is something that concerns everyone.”
Supervisors heaped praise, raises on Martinez as he rose through the ranks
While women said they were dodging Martinez’s unwelcome advances at the County Attorney’s Office and at the courthouse, his supervisors extolled his prosecutorial skill.
Trial wins were cited like seasonending sports stats by supervisors at review time each year.
“Eleven victories, one not guilty”; “Six trials and 53 trial days”; “Prosecuted six murder trials spanning 60 trial days.”
Supervisors heaped praise on Martinez for his ability to get convictions in performance evaluations that could have doubled as action-movie blurbs: “tough,” “fearless,” “committed,” “hardcharging,” “delivers under pressure” “gofor the-jugular style.”
They described his pursuit of justice as tireless, prolific and enthusiastic, repeatedly referring to him as a legal pit bull.
“He is well respected for his junk yard dog approach to litigation,” a supervisor wrote in 2003.
“He will take on any case, anybody, anytime,” the same supervisor wrote four years later.
Martinez grew up in Victorville, California, a small desert community north of Los Angeles that was still considered a popular stop on the famed Route 66 when Martinez was born in 1955.
In his book, “Conviction: The Untold Story of Putting Jodi Arias Behind Bars,” Martinez described Victorville as a close-knit community where he developed his moral compass. Martinez said his high school was so small that he knew almost everybody, which “made belonging easy.”
He excelled at solo competition, including running. Martinez said he wasn’t just a champion runner at Victor Valley High School, but “the best runner to ever compete” for the school.
“Perhaps Victorville was not as bucolic as I remember it, but it was the place I learned right from wrong,” he said in his book.
In 1974, Martinez put his hometown in the rearview mirror of an old Chevy Impala and headed off to college.
Martinez earned a bachelor’s degree in Spanish at the University of California-Irvine before attending law school. He graduated from the Arizona State University College of Law in 1983.
Martinez worked for private law firms in California and Arizona before taking a job with Community Legal Services in Phoenix.
He staked out his prosecutorial career path when he was hired as a deputy Maricopa County Attorney for $3,000 a month in 1988.
“In 10 years, I expect to be trying highprofile cases,” he wrote on his job application.
It didn’t take 10 years for Martinez to get there.
High-profile trials infused with sex and salacious details
In 1996, Martinez transferred to the prestigious Homicide Bureau, where he began working first-degree murder cases.
The unit’s name later changed to the Capital Litigation Bureau because prosecutors there decide when to seek the death penalty.
Martinez quickly became its star. His cases came ready made for true-crime
TV, and in court he played narrator for juries. Among his most famous — and infamous — trials:
The “Sleepwalker Case” of Scott Falater, a churchgoing electrical engineer who claimed he stabbed his wife 44 times, then held her head underwater in their pool during a somnambulant state. Convicted in 1999. Sentenced to life without parole.
Serial killer Cory Morris, who murdered five prostitutes and stored their decomposing corpses in his trailer. Martinez famously asked jurors how they would like to be strangled by Morris. Convicted in 2005. Sentenced to death.
“Black Angel of Death” Doug Grant, the former Phoenix Suns nutritionist who drowned his wife in a bathtub two days after she survived a fall from a Utah cliff on their second honeymoon. Grant’s wife, a self-described Mormon spiritualist, said she foresaw her death in a dream before the fall. Her death initially was ruled accidental, but four years later Grant was charged with murder. Convicted of manslaughter in 2009. Sentenced to five years.
By 2015, Martinez had put seven killers on death row. And in all but one of those cases, defense attorneys accused him of breaking the rules.
Martinez had a penchant for infusing his cases with sex. Long before he turned the Arias trials into daytime dramas of sex tapes and lurid testimony, he was accused of juicing his cases with salaciousness.
He introduced unproven allegations of necrophilia into the Morris trial. He hammered Grant’s new wife and former girlfriend about performing oral sex in cars and asked if they wore thong underwear.
The bedroom became a fixture in Martinez’s cases. It got him attention — and complaints of wrongdoing.
Defense attorneys, in State Bar filings and appeals, said he used sex to taint defendants. No detail was off-limits. He once questioned a woman’s use of lubricant in a prominent murder case.
Complaints about Martinez’s predilection led to accusations of prosecutorial misconduct; hiding evidence, making false statements, ignoring judges’ orders and altering courtroom exhibits.
Martinez denied the claims. The Arizona Supreme Court in reviewing appeals called Martinez’s behavior “improper” in one case and characterized it
as misconduct in another. But the justices did not overturn verdicts.
In April, the Supreme Court for the first time took direct action against Martinez. It reprimanded him for making inappropriate comments in three capital murder cases, including that of Morris. The court noted Martinez never before had faced disciplinary sanction as a member of the State Bar.
Former County Attorney Rick Romley, who took office in 1989, months after Martinez got hired, supported the prosecutor’s career advance through the 1990s.
He said Martinez was “always a hard charger” with the kind of attitude needed to close tough cases. He said Martinez is a talented prosecutor who made trying death penalty cases his mission.
But Martinez sometimes went too far in court, Romley said.
“He forgot. We’re supposed to be the good guys.”
Romley said he was not aware of harassment allegations against Martinez during his time as county attorney. He said the 1991 reprimand didn’t rise to his level and Martinez’s direct supervisors clearly believed it had been addressed.
He said if judges or court supervisors had concerns, they never were brought to his attention.
Romley, who left office in 2004, frequently consults on issues of legal ethics and has led independent state and county investigations.
He said the allegations swirling around Martinez today might stem from a lack of supervision. He said a lack of management might have allowed Martinez
to take things too far, in and out of court.
“That to me is maybe part of the issue,” he said. “Supervision is super critical.”
Romley said he was stunned that Montgomery allowed Martinez to write a book during the Arias trial. He said given the appeals surrounding the case, he would not have allowed Martinez to do it.
“Because he is a talented attorney, they (supervisors) kind of rolled over for him,” Romley said.
Probation supervisor describes experience she never forgot: ‘Smell this’
Susan Stodola says she can still smell it, taste it: the sweet, putrid stench that rose out of the evidence box after Martinez removed the lid.
He told her to step closer, look inside. She said she couldn’t see much, just some moldering clothes. She shook off her revulsion, told Martinez the smell wasn’t all that bad.
Stodola said when she lowered her head, Martinez put his hand on the back of her neck and shoved her face down, into the box, into a dead woman’s clothes.
“He must’ve said something like, ‘Smell this,’ ” Stodola said. “And then the smell was horrendous … I can’t say I had ever smelled death before … In my mind, I thought that must be what it is.”
The year was 2005. They were inside a courtroom where Martinez was prosecuting Morris for the serial slayings of prostitutes. Court had adjourned for the day. They were alone. No bailiffs, no clerks, no judicial assistants. Just her and Martinez. Who was laughing, she said.
Stodola wasn’t connected to the case. She supervised probation officers and had an office in the courthouse. She was walking down the hall when she said Martinez stopped her.
They weren’t friends, but they were friendly. Stodola said Martinez’s ex-wife used to work for her. So, she wasn’t surprised by the easy, familiar tone Martinez adopted, even though she hadn’t seen him in years.
“’Hey, Sue,’” she remembered him saying. “’Come up with me to the courtroom.’ And I did.”
Martinez told her to wait a second, that he wanted to show her something. She said he walked toward the back of the courtroom, to an area behind the bench, where the judge and clerks sit during trial, and came back carrying the box. He set it down on the defense table.
“It had to be a box, you know, of evidence. And he brought it to the table. It was, you know, one of those cardboard boxes where they have the evidence,” she said.
Stodola said Martinez confirmed what was inside; clothes worn by one of Morris’ victims, one of the women left to rot in a trailer after he strangled her.
“The next thing I knew ... he had his hand on the back of my neck and just pushed my face into the box,” she said.
Martinez didn’t hold her for very long, maybe five seconds, she said. She came up gagging and was met by Martinez’s amused grin.
“I don’t want to say like he was laughing at me … but it was kind of, you know, for lack of a better word, like a laugh, like, ‘Yeah, isn’t that bad?’ Something like that,” she said.
Stodola doesn’t remember what happened next. She knows she left the courtroom. She said Martinez never offered her an explanation or an apology.
“He never said, ‘Oh, I shouldn’t have done that.’”
The way Martinez used a murdered victim’s clothes during the Morris trial has become part of his lore. During closing arguments, he famously waved a jacket worn by one of the murdered women in front of the jury for its “smelling pleasure.”
The Supreme Court, in Morris’ appeal of his conviction, concluded the remark by Martinez was inappropriate but was not misconduct.
Stodola did not report the encounter with Martinez. She never complained to a supervisor, contacted Martinez’s bosses at the County Attorney’s Office or notified the court. For more than a decade, the only person she told was her husband.
She wonders if her job, trying to understand what motivates criminals, contributed to her silence.
Stodola retired from the Maricopa County Adult Probation Department in 2007 after 23 years. She now works as a capital mitigation specialist, helping defense attorneys investigate the histories of defendants charged with murder.
“I think about that a lot,” she said. “I think I gave him the benefit of the doubt because I didn’t think he was trying to hurt me. I remember thinking, that’s such a strange thing he did.”
Stodola said she decided to speak out when she saw an email in 2018 from lawyers preparing a complaint against Martinez on allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.
She said the email asked anyone with
personal experience with him to come forward.
“I thought, ‘Well, I have had an instance, and now that someone’s asked me, yes, I will speak,’” Stodola said.
Stodola filed a charge with the State Bar. Accompanying it was a statement from Stodola’s husband recounting what she had told him in 2005.
“What bothered me the most — more so than what happened to me — is the fact that he was tampering with evidence,” Stodola said. “By sticking my head in there, I would think my DNA went into the clothing. And that to me is, honest to God, far worse than what he did to me, because he messed with the evidence.”
Stodola said Martinez can pretend the incident never took place.
“Who would make up a story like that?” she said. “Oh my God, of all the stories to make up, how would I make up that story?”
Stodola’s letter to the State Bar was dated March 4, 2018. On July 27, 2018, the Bar notified Martinez’s lawyer that it had closed the case, saying “we have determined that no further investigation is warranted at this time.”
Stodola doesn’t regret coming forward, even if it didn’t result in discipline or mitigate the memory of the encounter.
“It stayed in my nostrils for a while,” she said. “It stayed in my head.”
Harassment claims, investigations and misconduct allegations linger. Would he be called to account?
It appeared in 2018 that Martinez had avoided any career-ending discipline.
Despite the mounting number of Bar charges alleging sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior during trials, Martinez kept his title and his job.
At least 16 charges involving 24 allegations have been filed against Martinez since 2013. Only one, involving prosecutorial misconduct in three death penalty cases, ended in discipline.
The county’s own sexual harassment investigation hadn’t waylaid his career. He continued going to court, prosecuting death penalty cases.
In some ways, the county’s 2018 reprimand all but ensured Martinez couldn’t face additional discipline resulting from the county’s internal investigation.
County policy protected Martinez. The human resources equivalent of the double jeopardy rule meant he couldn’t be disciplined twice for the same misconduct.
But it couldn’t protect him from new administrators — or new harassment allegations.
In September 2019, Martinez was reassigned to the auto theft division. Supervisors billed the move as an opportunity to give him time to deal with misconduct allegations filed with the State Bar.
The transfer signaled the beginning of the end. For the first time in decades, a county attorney had challenged Martinez’s position over complaints of misconduct. Six months later, Adel fired him, citing new claims of harassment and retaliation. He was accused of intimidating two women who had complained about him previously.
Martinez claimed he was targeted as part of a politically motivated vendetta. He vowed to fight for his job and filed an appeal with Maricopa County.
But five months later, he agreed to be disbarred.
Martinez was facing at least five Bar charges when he surrendered his license to practice law.
Those included allegations of inappropriate conduct in the Arias case; lying to State Bar investigators about his affair with the blogger; unethical behavior for writing the book about Arias; sexually harassing Knox; and harassing employees at the County Attorney’s Office.
Martinez did not admit to any misconduct as part of his disbarment.
For the larger-than-life former prosecutor, it is a reckoning 29 years in the making. One his supervisor predicted in 1991.
“When he (Martinez) understands why these things are not appropriate,” Windtberg wrote in the evaluation, “he will no longer be in danger of doing them.”