murder

The case against Debra Milke, who spent more than 20 years on death row for the murder of her four-year-old son, has been dismissed by a Maricopa County Superior Court judge.

Milke was convicted of murder in 1990 for accompanying two men into the desert and shooting her son in the head. These charges were overturned by a federal court in 2013 due to an issue with the detective at the time, Armando Saldate, who reportedly had several incidents of misconduct.

Saldate claimed that Milke confessed to murdering her son during an interview, but there were no witnesses at the time, and the proposed confession was never recorded. He declared in March 2014 that he would not testify in Milke’s retrial.

As a result, Milke’s defense filed to dismiss her case with prejudice so that she could not be tried again by prosecutors, and it was successfully dismissed during a brief hearing in Phoenix on Monday, March 23.

“I always believed this day would come I just didn’t think it would take 25 years, 3 months and 14 days to rectify such a blatant miscarriage of justice,” Milke said.

Milke has maintained her innocence and denied ever telling Saldate she was involved in the murder of her son.

The two men who were convicted in her son’s murder remain on death row and did not testify against her in the past.

Although prosecutors recently bid for a retrial, the Arizona Supreme Court’s rejected this request, and Milke’s attorneys said her case is over now besides a few small matters, like meeting with her probation officer and removing her monitoring bracelet.

Derek Medina, a 31-year-old Miami man, was recently charged with first-degree murder for shooting his wife multiple times and then posting a photo of her body on Facebook. Medina has entered a not-guilty plea in the case.

Medina told investigating officers that he was acting in self-defense when he shot his 26-year-old wife, Jennifer Alfonso, at their Miami home on August 8.

According to Medina, Alfonso repeatedly punched Medina in the chest, arm and temple during an argument.

Medina claims that he feared for his life.

Medina said as he argued with his wife, Alfonso pulled out a kitchen knife, which Medina claims he grabbed from her and put away. He claims that she began to punch him, at which point he grabbed his firearm.

He fired all rounds into his wife, killing her.

Medina took a picture of his wife’s corpse and posted it on Facebook with the caption, “Im going to prison or death sentence for killing my wife love you guys miss you guys take care Facebook people you will see me in the news my wife was punching me and I am not going to stand anymore with the abuse so I did what I did I hope you understand me.”

Medina claims to have taken the picture to let his wife’s friends and family know what happened and to tell them that he murdered her.

This case has received attention because Medina’s legal team believes that the death of Medina’s wife was self-defense. However, forensics reports show that his wife was on her knees with her arm raised in a defensive manner at the time of the shooting.

Before admitting to the crime and showing up to the police station, Medina told his 10-year-old daughter not to open the closet where he left his wife’s dead body. He then went to his aunt’s house where he told his family what happened and said goodbye.

Medina was charged with shooting a deadly missile, second-degree murder and child neglect. In early December, the murder charge upgraded to first degree because investigators believe that the incident was premeditated.

Medina’s defense team is currently requesting additional drug tests on Alfonso’s body for Alpha PVP, also known bath salts, because pills containing traces of the drug were found in their home in a bottle of garlic supplements before the shooting took place.

Designer drugs like bath salts can have numerous effects on people, including agitation, paranoia, increased pulse, hallucinations, high blood pressure and suicidal thoughts or behavior.

Alfonso was seen on surveillance cameras taking pills from the garlic supplement bottle, but her body was found to be drug-free after the initial toxicology report.

Medina’s defense is requesting more testing because most typical toxicology tests don’t pick up on unusual or newer drugs such as Alpha PVP.

Jeffrey Martinson, who spent nine years in custody for the death of his son in 2004, was released in November after a judge ruled that misconduct by the prosecutor in the case was too much to overcome.

The decision has far-reaching implications: Because Martinson’s verdict was overturned with prejudice, he cannot be retried for murder without invoking double jeopardy.

And despite an Arizona Court of Appeals ruling in 2012 that the prosecution could re-indict Martinson on different charges, the trial judge found that prosecutorial misconduct precluded filing new charges.

Martinson was charged with first-degree felony murder in 2011 for killing his son with muscle relaxant pills.

According to Martinson, he found his 5-year-old son, Josh, floating in the bathtub in 2004 and tried to save him but ultimately failed. Martinson said he then tried to kill himself. Autopsy reports, however, found muscle relaxants in the boy’s system. Based on the new evidence, Martinson reasoned his son must have taken the pills, thinking they looked like candy.

In 2011, a jury found Martinson guilty – a verdict that allowed for the death penalty. But one juror came forward before Martinson could be sentenced, stating that the forewoman forced other jurors into finding Martinson guilty. The guilty verdict was thrown out in March 2012 and by that fall, Martinson was facing new charges.

Martinson was ordered released from jail after Judge Sally Duncan ruled that the prosecutors’ actions had resulted in a “a win-by-any-means strategy.”

Duncan’s 28-page ruling detailed the conduct of the prosecution, including Deputy Maricopa County Attorney Frankie Grimsman, and concluded that their actions had demonstrated “a pattern and practice of misconduct designed to secure a conviction without regard to the likelihood of reversal”

Several things factored into Duncan’s decision:

– Martinson had been charged with felony murder, with the prosecution arguing that the boy had died as a result of child abuse. Despite the charge, prosecutors tried the case as if Martinson were charged with intentional, premeditated murder. Several times over the course of the trial, Grimsman was warned by the trial judge not to continue with the premeditated course of action.

– After the first conviction was thrown out because of improper testimony and juror misconduct, Grimsman then tried to re-indict Martinson on premeditated murder charges.

– Grimsman then repeatedly tried to have both Duncan and Martinson’s defense attorneys removed.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Warren Granville denied former Phoenix police officer Richard Chrisman’s request to have his aggravated assault charge thrown out on Nov. 13.

In 2010, Chrisman was charged with murder and animal cruelty after he responded to a domestic violence call and it ended with the death of 29-year-old Daniel Rodriguez, in a south Phoenix trailer according to the Huffington Post.

The Arizona Republic reported in November that Chrisman and his defense attorney Craig Mehrens once again sat in Granville’s courtroom in an effort to get the aggravated assault charge thrown out due to misconduct committed by the prosecutor, Deputy County Attorney Juan Martinez, throughout the trial.

Chrisman was found guilty of aggravated assault in September by a jury after putting a gun to head of Rodriguez while answering a domestic violence call in October 2010 with his partner Phoenix Police Officer Sergio Virgillo.

The critical testimony made by Virgillo opposed Chrisman’s statements, stating that Rodriguez was unarmed and backing away with his hands up when Chrisman fired two shots.

The trial ended in a hung jury when it came to convicting Chrisman of second-degree murder and animal cruelty and Chrisman was granted a new trial scheduled for early next year.

Mehrens attempted to get the aggravated assault charges dropped against Chrisman, which he will be sentenced for on Dec. 20, stating that Martinez has been misleading throughout the trial according to The Arizona Republic.

After only 45 minutes, Granville denied Chrisman’s request to have his aggravated assault verdict tossed out and scheduled a new trial for Jan. 27, 2014 for the remaining undecided charges.

Corso Law Group’s Christopher Corso discusses the charges Jerice Hunter, whose daughter Jhessye Shockley has been missing since October 2011, has been rearrested on in Arizona.