Prosecutors and defense attorneys were nearly all ready Friday to begin the upcoming trial for double murder defendant Mica Martinez, until the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System threw the court a curveball.
One final pre-trial hearing was scheduled for Friday morning during which the court was going to make one final revision to a planned victim-impact statement to be read at trial. However, the two OIDS capital defense attorneys that Martinez had been working with for nearly two years, G. Lynn Burch and Matthew Haire, didn't show up.
Instead, three new attorneys who were recently assigned to the Norman Capital Trial Division, Gary L. Henry, Mary S. Bruehl, and Bobby Lewis, appeared and asked the court to continue the trial.
According to their motion, Burch, the lead counsel in Martinez's case, was terminated due to force reduction efforts and budget cuts Feb. 1, and Haire was "transferred to another division." The new attorneys argued they simply don't have enough time before Feb. 13 to prepare to provide a "Constitutionally adequate defense" for Martinez, accused of bludgeoning Carl and Martha Miller to death Oct. 12, 2009. Saturday, February 04, 2012
