Martinson trial far into the future

Kristin Eberle sat quietly Wednesday as Judge Timothy Ryan read the standard victim's right statement that starts each day in Maricopa County Superior Court.

Passed by voters in 1990, they include the right to be treated with fairness, respect and dignity and the right to a speedy trial or disposition.

But the trial of the man charged with murdering her 5-year-old son, Joshua Jeffrey Eberle-Martin, on Aug. 24, 2004, has been anything but speedy.

Police arrested Jeffrey Martinson, 41, that day in his Ahwatukee Foothills apartment after he failed to return his son to Eberle after a weekend's visitation. Police found the child dead and Martinson passed out with cuts on his wrists from an apparent suicide attempt.

At the time Eberle, who wasn't married to Martinson but had full custody of Joshua, had gone to court to ask that Martinson's visitations be supervised, and at least one neighbor said he was despondent over the pending change.

But what appeared to be a simple case, Joshua was healthy when his mother dropped him off and days later he was dead, has dragged on for more than three years with Martinson now on his third defense team.

And the delays will continue.

Joseph Stazzone, one of Martinson's new defense attorneys, said April 30 that when he and fellow death penalty attorney Joseph Bevilacqua took on the case from the last defense team they inherited 20 boxes of interviews, medical records and other evidence that could be crucial to the case. He said that when they took the case, they explained that it could take 30 months before they would be ready for trial.

A trial date in 2010 was briefly mentioned, but Ryan, in an attempt to keep the case moving forward, set Nov. 3 as a tentative trial date.

"Maybe 2008 is a time when we can do this trial, I don't know," Ryan said.

Delays in capital cases came to a head last year when Judge James Keppel ordered Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas and the various offices that provide public defenders to add more attorneys and speed up the process.

But delays continue, with 121 capital cases on the docket, down slightly from the 135 in the system last year when Keppel tried to eliminate the logjam. And while the Martinson case is old, there are older ones in the system that need to be tried first.

Meanwhile, Eberle has attended over two dozen court hearings over 44 months waiting for the trial to begin.