Man accused of relaying order to kill Tijuana photojournalist to stand trial

A third defendant in the 2022 slaying of Tijuana photojournalist Margarito Martínez opted for a trial instead of a plea bargain during a hearing that finally took place Tuesday after being postponed five times in the past year.

Prosecutors are now asking for a 60-year sentence if he is convicted of premeditated murder.

Christian — identified only by his first name as is protocol in pending cases in Mexico — is accused by prosecutors of ordering the killing of Martínez on someone else's command and demanding a video to confirm it.

Martínez, who covered the crime beat for several Mexican media outlets, was shot to death outside his house in the Camino Verde neighborhood in Tijuana on Jan. 17, 2022.

Two other defendants — Adrián Ramos, nicknamed “El Uber,” who shot Martínez three times in the head, and José Ochoa, alias “El Huesos,” who recorded the murder with a phone from a distance — were sentenced to 25 years each in December 2022.

Last spring, the defendant asked the judge for more time to consider a 25-year sentence originally offered by the prosecution. But then his attorney failed to show up to the next two hearings later that year, and the judge requested new counsel for the defendant.

The case was postponed twice more, blamed on weather and scheduling conflicts.

On Tuesday, after a new judge said it was the last opportunity to accept the plea bargain, Christian — also known by the monikers "El Cabo 16" or "El Jaguar" — confirmed his intention to take the case to trial, for which no date has yet been set.

During Tuesday's five-hour virtual hearing, prosecutors painstakingly detailed all the evidence that will be presented during the trial, including interviews with two witnesses, one of whom was shot to death last year, as well as WhatsApp conversations and data collected from the three defendants' cellphones.

Martínez’s widow and her legal adviser also attended the hearing.

Christian asked the judge to call as witnesses Ramos and Ochoa, who are serving their sentences in El Hongo prison in Tecate. Christian, currently awaiting trial in the same prison, said that their testimonies could be "useful for the clarification of the facts."

Despite objections from the prosecution and Martinez's widow's legal adviser, the judge agreed to include both testimonies “in order not to violate the fundamental rights” of the defendant.

On Wednesday, during the state government’s weekly press conference, Baja California Attorney General María Elena Andrade said that the prosecutor’s office has a “solid case” and that they won’t appeal the judge’s decision to include the testimony of the two convicted defendants in the case.

Prosecutors previously said that it appeared Christian acted on orders from a criminal leader known by the nickname "El Cabo 20." Former Baja California Attorney General Ricardo Iván Carpio said in 2022 that "El Cabo 20" was allegedly behind Martínez's murder.

Prosecutors have said that "El Cabo 20" may have mistakenly assumed that Martínez was involved in social media posts and an article in a Tijuana weekly newspaper that exposed his family, giving a possible motive for the killing.

"El Cabo 20" is in Mexican custody after being charged with murder in the killing of another man. He was not mentioned during Tuesday's hearing.

In January 2022, Martínez and veteran journalist Lourdes Maldonado were murdered in Tijuana within a week. Three men were sentenced to 20 and 24 years in prison in Maldonado’s case. The person who ordered the killing and the motive are still unknown.

This story originally appeared in San Diego Union-Tribune .