Juan Martinez: From Jodi Arias Prosecutor to Disbarment

Juan Martinez, the former Maricopa County prosecutor best known for convicting Jodi Arias, was disbarred on July 17, 2020, after he consented to surrender his Arizona law license rather than continue defending against State Bar disciplinary charges. The charges involved sexual harassment allegations from 17 women connected to his work and ethical misconduct across several capital cases, including the Arias trial. Weeks earlier, the Arizona Supreme Court had formally reprimanded him for prejudicial courtroom conduct, and Maricopa County had fired him in February 2020.

The Consent Disbarment

Martinez did not go through a contested disbarment hearing. He filed a consent instead, telling the court: “I no longer desire to defend the charges but wish to consent to disbarment. My consent is not an admission.”¹ His attorney, Donald Wilson Jr., stressed that the consent “does not represent an admission of misconduct on his part nor can it be interpreted as an adverse judicial finding.”

The practical effect was immediate. All pending State Bar disciplinary cases against Martinez ended, and he lost his license to practice law in Arizona. By consenting, he also avoided a public hearing at which the sexual harassment allegations and the full record of his Arias-trial conduct would have been aired and tested. Any future application for reinstatement would be treated as one from a lawyer disbarred for professional misconduct, subject to Arizona Supreme Court Rule 72.²

Sexual Harassment Allegations and the “JM List”

The most volatile set of charges facing Martinez when he agreed to disbarment came from women who had worked around him. Investigative reporting documented accounts from 17 women, including law clerks, a prosecutor, a defense attorney, jurors, and a probation supervisor, who said Martinez had harassed or mistreated them.³ Co-workers compiled the accounts into a document that circulated as the “JM List.”

State Bar documents and news reports described specific allegations: that Martinez told one woman he could guess the color of her underwear, told another he wanted to “climb her like a statue,” and told a court reporter he wanted to see what was inside her skirt.⁴ Clerks at the county attorney’s office reportedly hid in bathrooms to avoid him.

Two allegations tied directly to the Arias trial. Martinez was accused of having a sexual relationship with a blogger named Jen Wood and leaking sealed juror information to her during the sentencing phase. He was also accused of communicating with a dismissed juror who had sent him nude photographs, asking her for information about how remaining jurors viewed the evidence. Martinez denied both the affair and the leak.

The Supreme Court Reprimand in Five Capital Cases

The second track of discipline concerned Martinez’s behavior in court. The State Bar’s Attorney Discipline Probable Cause Committee found probable cause for ethical violations in September 2016 based on five capital prosecutions: State v. Morris, State v. Beemon, State v. Gallardo, State v. Lynch (II), and State v. Arias.⁵ A hearing panel twice dismissed the complaint, concluding the Bar had not met its burden.

The Arizona Supreme Court disagreed. On April 30, 2020, the court issued its own opinion finding that Martinez had violated Arizona ethical rule ER 8.4(d), the prohibition on conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice, in three of the five cases:

In State v. Morris (2005), Martinez singled out female jurors by name and appearance, urged them to imagine the defendant sitting on their chests or pulling their hair, and offered a victim’s jacket to the jury for its “smelling pleasure.”⁵
In State v. Gallardo (2010), he invoked the victim’s family’s grief and persisted with a line of argument after the trial judge repeatedly sustained defense objections.⁶
In State v. Lynch (II), he made argumentative opening statements and suggested jurors could not know what it was like to be “manhandled” by a knife-wielding defendant.⁵

The court noted that Martinez was a highly experienced prosecutor who knew the rules against such emotional appeals, and that he had repeated the same type of misconduct across cases spanning years. It imposed a formal reprimand. Prior appellate courts had flagged similar conduct in the underlying criminal cases as “prosecutorial misconduct” without reversing the convictions; the 2020 opinion was the first time Martinez was formally found to have committed ethical misconduct for his courtroom behavior.⁶

The Arias Appeal and a Referral to the State Bar

In March 2020, the Arizona Court of Appeals upheld Arias’s first-degree murder conviction and natural-life sentence. It did so while acknowledging that “prosecutorial misconduct undeniably permeated this case” and describing a “pattern of intentional misconduct” rather than “isolated missteps.” The panel concluded that the evidence of guilt was overwhelming enough that the jury would have convicted regardless, and that it would not “reverse convictions merely to punish a prosecutor’s misdeeds.”⁷ The appellate panel then took the uncommon step of referring Martinez to the State Bar for possible discipline over his trial conduct.⁸

A separate ethics complaint stemming from the Arias case had already been filed by a law firm representing Arias, alleging that Martinez created a conflict of interest by profiting from his 2016 book, Conviction: The Untold Story of Putting Jodi Arias Behind Bars, while the case was still on appeal.⁹

Fired by Maricopa County First

Martinez lost his job before he lost his license. In September 2019, he was reassigned from the Capital Litigation Bureau to the Auto Theft Bureau.⁹ He was placed on paid administrative leave on February 7, 2020, and fired on February 21, 2020.¹⁰

The hearing officer who reviewed the termination, Harold Merkow, concluded that Martinez’s value to the office had been “fatally eroded” by a history of retaliating against female co-workers and the high likelihood that the behavior would continue. Merkow noted that Martinez had received a formal reprimand in 2018 regarding sexual harassment and misconduct and had disregarded it.³ Martinez’s attorney argued the firing was a “vendetta” led by senior officials, but in October 2020 the Maricopa County Merit Systems Commission unanimously upheld the termination.

What the Disbarment Means Going Forward

Because Martinez consented to disbarment, there is no final adjudication on the harassment allegations or the Arias-related ethics charges; the Arizona Supreme Court’s April 2020 reprimand remains the only formal finding of ethical misconduct against him. The consent order treats him as disbarred for professional misconduct for any future reinstatement application under Rule 72, meaning he cannot simply reapply but must meet the standards set for lawyers removed for ethical violations.²

1
Washington Post. Prosecutor Who Convicted Jodi Arias Agrees to Disbarment
2
Death Penalty Information Center. Juan Martinez Disbarment Order
3
AZ Central. Jodi Arias Prosecutor Juan Martinez’s Firing Upheld by County Panel
4
Fox 10 Phoenix. Prosecutor in Jodi Arias Trial Faces Disciplinary Hearing Amid Misconduct Allegations
5
Arizona Supreme Court. In Re Juan M. Martinez, SB-17-0081-AP
6
Findlaw. In Re Juan M. Martinez, SB-17-0081-AP
7
Arizona Mirror. The State of Arizona v. Jodi Arias and Juan Martinez
8
Arizona Court of Appeals. State v. Arias, 1 CA-CR 15-0302
9
Fox 10 Phoenix. Juan Martinez, Ex-Prosecutor Known for Role in Jodi Arias Trial, Has Been Disbarred
10
KTAR. Arias Prosecutor Juan Martinez Fired by Maricopa County, Appealing Move