Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes has formally asked the Arizona Supreme Court to set January 27, 2027, as the execution date for Ernesto Martinez, the man convicted of murdering Arizona Department of Public Safety (DPS) Trooper Robert 'Bob' Martin during a traffic stop on the Beeline Highway in 1995. The request is in court documents dated November 6, reported this week.

Source: Focal News (Phoenix)

The filing is the formal motion step that follows the Attorney General's notice in September 2026 that the state would seek a warrant of execution, with dates as early as January. In the November filing, the state initially listed three possible dates in January 2027 — January 13, January 20 and January 27 — before correcting the filing to request only January 27.

What the state argues

Prosecutors say Martinez has exhausted both his state and federal appeals. His final petition to the U.S. Supreme Court was denied on January 9, 2023. Prosecutors acknowledged in their filing that a post-conviction notice Martinez filed in 2019 remains pending, but they argue it does not legally prevent the court from issuing an execution warrant. It was not immediately clear whether Martinez's defence attorneys plan to challenge the request or seek further review; in response to the state's September filing, the defence argued the state was rushing to schedule the execution. The Attorney General's Office provided no additional comment beyond the court filing.

Jan 27, 2027Execution date the state is asking the court to set
108People on death row in Arizona (state Dept. of Corrections)
1995Year Trooper Bob Martin was killed
25Condemned inmates, incl. Martinez, who had exhausted appeals at the September filing

The 1995 killing on the Beeline Highway

According to court records and DPS accounts, on August 15, 1995, Trooper Martin — who was 31 — stopped Martinez on the Beeline Highway (State Route 87) at Milepost 195, a few miles north of Shea Boulevard in Maricopa County. Martinez shot Martin four times with a .38-calibre handgun; the Arizona Supreme Court's opinion in the case records wounds to the hand, neck, back and head, the back and head wounds being fatal. Martinez then fled and remained at large for two days, during which he killed a second person in California, before being captured in California.

A jury convicted Martinez of first-degree murder in 1997, and he was sentenced to death the following year. The Arizona Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and death sentence in May 2000. In California, he was convicted in 2018 of the second killing — the murder of Randip Singh — and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole there. DPS has memorialised Martin as an officer killed in the line of duty.

A case in the courts for three decades

The Martinez case has moved through direct appeal, state post-conviction relief and federal habeas proceedings since the 1990s. The state's position is that every avenue is now exhausted; the pending 2019 post-conviction notice is the one filing the defence side can still point to, and the Supreme Court's handling of it will shape whether a warrant issues.

Arizona's death row in context

Arizona currently has 108 people on death row, according to the state Department of Corrections. At the time of the September notice, Martinez was counted among 25 condemned inmates who had exhausted all avenues of appeal. If the court grants the request, the execution would be the latest in a series of capital proceedings in a state that has faced scrutiny in recent years over its execution protocols and the availability of lethal-injection drugs.

What happens next

The Arizona Supreme Court will now consider the request and, if it grants it, issue a warrant setting the specific date and time. No hearing date on the motion has been announced. Until the court acts, January 27 remains the date the state has asked for — not a date the court has set.