Accused murderer may be ‘guilty but insane’

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Marcos Martinez is accused of the brutal murder of Vicky Ten Hoven. (photos PCSO/Facebook)

A man accused of killing his grandmother may have an insanity option.

Marcos Jarrell Martinez, 23, is charged with the 2018 first-degree murder of Vicky Ten Hoven, 62. Martinez appeared in court Friday morning in a brown jumpsuit and shackles, his long hair loose down his back.

Judge Jason Holmberg accepted Dr. Joel Parker as an independent expert in the possibility of a “guilty but insane” stance. Parker is a forensic psychiatrist.

Earlier in the case, Judge Lawrence Wharton found Martinez competent to stand trial based on an Arizona State Hospital evaluation, but the Parker examination would be making a judgment on the defendant’s mental state at the time of Ten Hoven’s murder.

Last week, Holmberg signed an order for additional defense funds for the case because of the volume of records involved.

Martinez has a history of mental-health issues. A year before his grandmother’s murder, Martinez had been “involuntarily committed” at behavioral health and substance abuse treatment facility in Mesa.

According to Arizona law, “A person may be found guilty except insane if at the time of the commission of the criminal act the person was afflicted with a mental disease or defect of such severity that the person did not know the criminal act was wrong… A guilty except insane verdict is not a criminal conviction for sentencing enhancement purposes.”

Jan. 18, 2018, Ten Hoven’s husband found her deceased in a pool of blood on their kitchen floor. Though she had been stabbed several times, the cause of death was determined to be blunt-force trauma.

Martinez’s next hearing was set for September.