Arizona Seeks Execution Date for Martinez

A motion for an execution warrant is not the warrant. Martinez is already under a death sentence for killing Trooper Bob Martin, and Jan. 27, 2027, is only the date the state is asking the Arizona Supreme Court to set. The court has not set it.

On Nov. 6, Attorney General Kris Mayes asked the Arizona Supreme Court for a warrant to execute Ernesto Salgado Martinez on Jan. 27, 2027. The motion first listed Jan. 13, Jan. 20, and Jan. 27. A notice of errata filed the same day said the first two dates were included by mistake, and that the state is asking for Jan. 27 only. The corrections department told the attorney general that staff would be available that day. The court has not issued the warrant.

A jury convicted Martinez in 1997 of first-degree murder for shooting Department of Public Safety Trooper Bob Martin during a traffic stop on Aug. 15, 1995. The stop was on the Beeline Highway, a few miles north of Shea Boulevard. He was sentenced to death the following year. The Arizona Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and the sentence.

The state says the direct appeal, the first post-conviction case, and the federal habeas case are finished, so a warrant has to issue, and that a still-pending 2019 post-conviction notice does not stop one.

The same day Martin was killed, Martinez fled toward California. A California jury later convicted him of murdering Randip Singh, a clerk at a market in Blythe, and the court sentenced him to life in prison without parole in that case. That sentence is separate from the warrant Mayes is asking for.