John Martini, Sr., was sentenced to death in New Jersey for the 1989 kidnapping and murder of Irving Flax, a business executive from Fair Lawn, in Bergen County. According to the state's highest court, Martini and his girlfriend at the time kidnapped Flax and demanded ransom money from his wife. The money was paid. Martini then shot Flax and killed him, and the jury that convicted him found that he had done so to keep Flax from identifying him.
The Flax case was not his first murder conviction. When the New Jersey Supreme Court considered his appeals in 1999, it wrote that Martini "has twice been convicted of murder in Pennsylvania and Arizona." The court opinions do not give the names of those victims, the dates of the killings, or whether the convictions came from guilty pleas or jury verdicts. Taken together, the three convictions came from killings in three different states.
Martini was 60 years old when he went on trial in 1990. For the next 17 years his case moved through state and federal courts, and for part of that time the most important question in it was not whether he was guilty, which he did not dispute, but whether a condemned man who said he wanted no more appeals had the right to stop them. In December 2007 New Jersey abolished the death penalty. The Associated Press listed Martini among the eight men on death row whom the bill would spare, and the governor commuted those eight sentences to life in prison without parole.
Irving Flax lived in Fair Lawn, in Bergen County, New Jersey. The courts described him as a business executive and businessman. He was married, and it was his wife whom the kidnappers called with their demand for money. Years later, as the legislature moved to end the death penalty, she spoke of him as her "innocent, loving, adoring husband," in remarks reported by the Associated Press in December 2007.
The appellate opinions say little else about him. They do not give his age, the nature of his business, or how long he and his wife had been married.
The facts of the crime were not in dispute at trial, and the New Jersey Supreme Court summed them up in a few sentences that it repeated in its later opinions. "The evidence at trial established that Martini and [his] codefendant abducted Flax and demanded ransom money from his wife," the court wrote in 1999. "Although the money was paid, Martini nevertheless shot Flax." The federal appeals court gave the same account in 2003: Martini and his girlfriend kidnapped Flax in Fair Lawn and demanded a ransom, and his wife paid it.
The jury found two aggravating factors under New Jersey's capital statute: that the murder was committed in the course of a kidnapping, and that it was committed to escape detection. In the words of the state court, the jury found that Martini "killed Flax to prevent him from identifying defendant."
The Bergen County Prosecutor's homicide squad conducted the initial investigation. Among the physical evidence they collected were five burned screens of the kind used to smoke cocaine. Those screens became one of the issues in his later appeals.
The court opinions identify Martini's girlfriend as a codefendant. They do not say what charges she faced or how her case ended, and her outcome is not on record.
Martini was tried in 1990 before a Bergen County jury, prosecuted by the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office. He did not deny that he had kidnapped Flax or that he had fired the shots that killed him. His defense was about his state of mind. His lawyers argued that his "serious and long-standing addiction to cocaine," as the federal court later put it, had so diminished his capacity that he could not have acted purposely or knowingly, the mental states New Jersey law required for murder.
The jury rejected that defense and convicted him of murder, kidnapping and related offenses. The trial then moved to a separate penalty phase, at which the same jury had to decide between death and a prison term. The defense again relied on his drug use and his mental condition, and also asked the jurors to weigh his age.
Jury selection itself later became the subject of a federal appeal. During questioning of the jury pool, one prospective juror said of capital punishment, "I don't believe in it." Asked whether he could vote for a death sentence, he answered, "That's a hard situation," then "Yes, sir," and later "I guess so" and "It's a hard question." Asked whether he could serve as foreperson and announce a death verdict, he said no. The trial judge excused him, finding that his answers "demonstrated that he would have substantial difficulty voting for the death penalty."
During its penalty deliberations the jury sent the judge a written question: "(A) Are the expert witnesses' written reports available or (B) are we only to consider their testimony for mitigating factors?" The judge told the jurors that the written reports were not available and that "Only those items that were admitted into evidence are available to you." As for the experts' testimony, he said, "That's what they were presented for and that's how you're to consider their testimony for those purposes."
The verdict on punishment was recorded in detail. The jurors unanimously found both aggravating factors, murder in the course of a kidnapping and murder to escape detection. All 12 rejected the mitigating factors of extreme mental or emotional disturbance and diminished capacity. They split six to six on his age as a mitigating factor, and six to six on the so-called catch-all factor, which covers anything else about the defendant or the crime that a juror finds mitigating. Weighing the factors, the jury found unanimously, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the aggravating factors outweighed the mitigating ones. The trial judge sentenced Martini to death.
In 1993, in State v. Martini, the court upheld both the conviction and the death sentence. The next year, in a second opinion, it conducted a proportionality review of the sentence and again upheld it. The court later referred to these two decisions as Martini I and Martini II.
On October 2, 1995, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear his case. The trial court then issued a warrant setting his execution for November 15, 1995.
Martini's response to the execution date set his case apart. He told the courts that he did not wish to file any further appeals. On October 30, 1995, the Office of the Public Defender filed a petition for post-conviction relief and asked for a stay of execution anyway, over his objection. The trial court stayed the execution and held a hearing on his mental state. It found him competent to give up further proceedings, but ruled that the Public Defender could not pursue relief on his behalf without his consent. The stay remained in place while the state Supreme Court took up the question.
In an affidavit in those proceedings, Martini explained part of his reasoning. "The longer I live, the more my family name is damaged by publicity about my crime," he wrote, in a passage quoted in a 1999 article in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law by the psychiatrist Kenneth J. Weiss. In another affidavit described by the state Supreme Court, he said he had not been "adversely effected [sic] by drugs or alcohol at the time" of the murder and had committed it with "a clear mind," a statement that cut directly against the defense his lawyers had offered at trial.
On June 28, 1996, the New Jersey Supreme Court decided the question, in the opinion known as Martini III. It accepted that Martini had voluntarily expressed a wish to bring no further appeals, but it held that he could not stop the post-conviction process. The court pointed to the "reliability and integrity" of death sentences, and, as Weiss explained, to the fact that certain issues can be raised only in post-conviction proceedings. It sent the case back for a hearing on the Public Defender's petition. In Weiss's summary of the ruling, "The New Jersey Supreme Court said no."
The ruling drew a reply from the legislature. On February 10, 1997, the Senate Judiciary Committee issued a statement on a proposed amendment to the state constitution. The statement cited State v. Martini, decided June 28, 1996, as holding that mentally competent defendants in death penalty cases could not voluntarily waive post-conviction proceedings, and it described the amendment as providing that the constitution did not require those proceedings when a competent defendant knowingly and voluntarily chose not to pursue them.
The case returned to the trial court, where the same judge who had presided over the 1990 trial heard the post-conviction petition. In a second opinion, in 1997, known as Martini IV, the state Supreme Court set aside a trial court order that had barred the use of certain evidence and directed a fuller hearing.
The proceedings were unusual in their secrecy. The petition rested in large part on evidence about Martini's life that, the Public Defender argued, his trial lawyers should have found and put before the jury as mitigation. Martini himself wanted that evidence kept confidential. According to the state Supreme Court, he had "purposely hid information from his attorney and deflected questions put to him because he considered the information to be confidential." The court sealed the record of the post-conviction proceedings, explaining in a footnote that it was "convinced that Martini's interest outweighs the public interest in disclosure." The published opinions describe the evidence only in general terms.
The remand hearing lasted a year and a week. The trial court heard testimony, including from a member of the Bergen County Prosecutor's homicide squad who had worked on the original investigation, and examined the confidential material, which the Public Defender submitted in two sets. The judge ruled that the evidence was not mitigating and excluded the testimony and reports of two defense mitigation experts, who had been offered to show how the material could have been built into a social history of Martini's life.
On July 27, 1999, the New Jersey Supreme Court affirmed the denial of post-conviction relief, in an opinion by Chief Justice Poritz. The court accepted that the evidence had some mitigating value, but found that it presented "a troubling picture that has some mitigation value mixed with a substantial downside potential." Putting it before the jury, the court reasoned, "would have opened the door to powerful countervailing testimony," and trial counsel would "most likely" have kept it out because of its potential to do harm. The first set of evidence, it found, was "sufficiently injurious" that it had "only marginal mitigating value," and the experts' reports were "cumulative."
The court therefore held that his trial lawyers had not been ineffective for failing to "discover and put forward evidence that contains both mitigating and damaging elements." It also rejected a claim under Brady v. Maryland that the prosecution had withheld evidence, a claim about the burned cocaine screens kept in the state's evidence file, a claim that the jury should have been told about parole eligibility, and arguments based on international law and on racial bias in the capital system. It found that the errors he alleged did not, even taken together, require a new penalty trial.
Justice Coleman wrote briefly to say that he joined the Chief Justice's opinion. Another member of the court wrote separately, arguing that the petition "must be granted." That opinion argued that Martini "wants to prevent disclosure of the evidence, and has been forced to bargain his life for that end," that "it is doubtful that Martini truly wants to be killed by lethal injection," and that the state's position was "dishonorable." Its author concluded that the costs of continuing the capital prosecution were "prohibitive."
Martini next filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey, raising seven grounds. Judge William H. Walls denied it on every ground in 2002. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit agreed to hear two of the issues: the excusal of the prospective juror who had said he did not believe in the death penalty, and the trial judge's answer to the penalty jury's question about the expert reports.
On October 22, 2003, a panel of Judges Roth, Becker and Cowen affirmed, in an opinion by Judge Becker. On the juror, the court called the question "close and difficult," but held that Martini "has failed to meet the rigorous standard" that federal law sets for overturning a state trial judge's finding that a juror's ability to serve was substantially impaired. On the jury question, it called the trial judge's answer "far from ideal," but held that it did not violate clearly established federal law, and that any error would have been harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. The United States Supreme Court declined to hear the case in 2004.
A second state petition argued that the aggravating factors should have been set out in the indictment and presented to the grand jury, relying on the United States Supreme Court decision in Ring v. Arizona. The trial court denied it, and on March 30, 2004, the state Supreme Court granted the prosecution's motion for summary disposition of his appeal.
In November 2004 Martini filed a third petition. It challenged a sentence in the penalty-phase instructions that told jurors to "attempt to reach agreement on the question whether a particular mitigating factor does or does not exist," even though the law did not require them to agree. His lawyers argued that the wording pressed jurors toward unanimity, and that the six-to-six splits on two mitigating factors showed the harm. The trial court heard argument on February 8, 2005, and denied the petition, and he appealed on March 22, 2005.
On July 25, 2006, the New Jersey Supreme Court affirmed, in an opinion by Justice Wallace. The court decided to reach the merits rather than enforce the procedural bar against a late claim, and held that the charge, read as a whole, had not prejudiced him and that his appellate lawyers had not been ineffective for failing to raise the point earlier. It also directed the committee of trial judges responsible for capital cases to remove the "attempt to reach agreement" language from the model jury charge. A dissenting justice argued that the instruction was misleading and that the split votes suggested the jurors had felt pressure to agree.
New Jersey had reinstated the death penalty in 1982, and no one had been executed in the state since 1963, the Associated Press reported in December 2007. A 2004 court ruling had barred executions until the state revised its procedures, and the AP reported that it never did. A special state commission had reported in January that the death penalty cost more than life imprisonment, did not deter murder, and carried the risk of executing an innocent person.
In December 2007 the legislature voted to replace the death penalty with life in prison without parole. The state Senate passed the bill on a Monday and the Assembly on the following Thursday, by a vote of 44 to 36, according to an Associated Press report printed by The Herald of Everett, Washington, on December 13, 2007. The report named Martini among the eight men on death row whom the measure would spare, and quoted Irving Flax's widow. "I feel the system has spit on me, has slapped me and I am fuming," she said. She told the AP that she seethed at the thought that Martini would go on living "while my innocent, loving, adoring husband lies in a grave."
Governor Jon S. Corzine had said he would sign the bill within a week. JURIST, the legal news service, reported that he commuted the sentences of the eight inmates on death row to life in prison without parole and then signed the bill ending capital punishment, making New Jersey the first state to abolish the death penalty since the United States Supreme Court allowed executions to resume in 1976.
The appellate courts gave the date of the crime differently. The New Jersey Supreme Court's 2006 opinion and the Associated Press place the kidnapping and murder in 1989, the year before the trial. The Third Circuit's 2003 opinion refers to the crime as having occurred in 1990.
The two earlier murder convictions are recorded in the state court's 1999 opinion in a single sentence, which names the states, Pennsylvania and Arizona, but not the victims, the dates, the courts, or whether he pleaded guilty or was found guilty at trial. Those details, and the order in which the convictions came, are not on record.
The confidential mitigation evidence at the center of the 1996 to 1999 litigation was sealed by the court, and the opinions describe its contents only in general terms. They also do not say how his girlfriend's case ended.
1989: Irving Flax, a business executive from Fair Lawn, New Jersey, is kidnapped and held for ransom; after his wife pays, John Martini, Sr., shoots and kills him.
1990: A Bergen County jury convicts Martini of murder, kidnapping and related offenses, rejects his diminished-capacity defense, and returns a death verdict; he is sentenced to death.
1993: The New Jersey Supreme Court upholds the conviction and death sentence (Martini I).
1994: The court upholds the sentence on proportionality review (Martini II).
October 2, 1995: The United States Supreme Court declines to hear the case.
1995: An execution date is set for November 15.
October 30, 1995: Over Martini's objection, the Public Defender files for post-conviction relief; the execution is stayed.
June 28, 1996: In Martini III the state Supreme Court holds that the post-conviction process must go forward despite his wish to waive it.
February 10, 1997: A state Senate committee issues a statement on a proposed constitutional amendment responding to the ruling.
1997: Martini IV orders a fuller hearing on the sealed mitigation evidence.
July 27, 1999: Martini V affirms the denial of post-conviction relief.
2002: Federal district judge William H. Walls denies his habeas petition.
October 22, 2003: The Third Circuit affirms.
March 30, 2004: The state Supreme Court summarily disposes of his second petition, based on Ring v. Arizona.
November 2004: He files a third petition.
July 25, 2006: The state Supreme Court affirms the denial of the third petition and orders a change to the model jury charge.
January 2007: A state commission reports that the death penalty costs more than life imprisonment and does not deter murder.
December 2007: The legislature abolishes the death penalty; Governor Jon S. Corzine commutes the sentences of the eight men on death row, Martini among those the AP listed, to life without parole.