A judge has kicked Pinal County, Arizona off a death penalty case. The case is about four people killed in 2017. Judge Patricia Starr made the call on August 12, 2026. She ruled that Pinal County's own prosecutors cannot work the case anymore. She also ruled that Pinal County's own court cannot hear it anymore.
The judge did not say anyone broke the rules on purpose. She found something else. She found too many conflicts of interest. A conflict of interest is when someone tied to a case has a reason not to be fair. Judge Starr wrote that "justice must not just be fair, but appear to be fair." In plain words, a case has to look clean. It is not enough to just be clean.
This is not a small local story. It is a big legal scandal. A death penalty case tied to four murders has been stuck for years. One lawyer's mistakes caused the mess. Now the case may have to start over in a new county. That means more years of waiting. The victims' families wait. The two men charged wait too.
The murders happened in October 2017. It happened in Casa Grande, Arizona. Four people were killed: Crysta Proctor, Justin Yates, Jose Aguilera, and Connie Carrera. Proctor's estranged husband, Alec Perez, was arrested. Rodney Ortiz Jr. was arrested with him. News reports from that time listed Perez as 31 years old. They listed Ortiz as 22. Prosecutors filed capital murder charges. That means both men could face the death penalty if a jury finds them guilty.
A lawyer named Matthew Long became Perez's lead defense lawyer. Arizona has a rule for death penalty defense lawyers. A lawyer must first work one death case as a helper, called a "second chair." That means working under a lawyer who has done it before. Long never had that experience. The Arizona Supreme Court let him take the case anyway. But there was a catch. A qualified lawyer had to work next to him the whole time. The court later found that never really happened.
The problem came out in 2024. That was seven years into the case. A court removed Long as lead lawyer that November. Long quit the case in February 2025. By then, more trouble was already spreading. Crysta Proctor's mother is named Christine Maples. She sued Long and Pinal County in March 2025. Long struck back too. He filed a notice of claim against the county. He also filed one against the judge who removed him. A notice of claim is the paperwork someone files before suing the government.
Long's past made things worse. Before he defended people, he worked as a Pinal County prosecutor for years. In 2011, he prosecuted a man named Fernando Almanza. Long backed up a jailhouse informant's story in that case. Years later, the truth about that informant's deal came out. A federal judge threw out Almanza's conviction. Almanza sued Pinal County in August 2025 over it. All of this raised one big question. Could Pinal County's own office and courts still run the Perez and Ortiz case fairly?
Judge Starr answered no. She said the lawsuits tied to Long touched too many people in Pinal County. That included a sitting judge. She said a fair-minded person would doubt real justice could happen there. This is true even without proof that anyone acted in bad faith. That is why she removed both the Pinal County Attorney's Office and the Pinal County court from the case.
Long has defended himself in public. He posted on Facebook that "the only just outcome is the removal of the death notice." That means he believes prosecutors should drop their push for the death penalty. He also said both sides have avoided calling him as a witness.
Arizona only tries death penalty cases in three counties. Pinal is now out. The case will likely move to Yavapai County or Maricopa County. Pinal County has not said if it will appeal. The report that broke this story said the county may fight the ruling. The Pinal County Attorney's Office had not commented as of this report. Ortiz's lawyers are Jamie Sparks and James Soslowsky. They praised the ruling. They said it protects their client's right to a fair trial.
For now, no one has set a new court date. The case waits while lawyers sort out where it goes next.
