First trial starts for man suspected in jail death

A man accused of committing a murder in the Spokane County Jail last year went on trial Monday on earlier murder charges that were the reason he was in the jail.

Brandon W. Martin, 20, had been charged with two counts of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder and second-degree unlawful possession of a firearm. He allegedly helped kill a jail inmate a year later, on Oct. 2, 2004.

Martin is scheduled for trial in July on a second-degree murder charge in the jailhouse strangling of inmate Christopher Lee Rentz, 21. Co-defendant Michael Lee West Jr., 28, who is charged with first-degree murder in Rentz’s death, also is awaiting trial in July.

In the trial that got under way Monday with opening statements, Martin is accused of shooting Donald W. Corey and Thomas N. Morris to death and of attempting to kill Ross G. Baulne during an Oct. 4, 2003, rampage.

Martin acknowledges he committed the crimes in Baulne’s home at the Mead Royale mobile home park, but claims he was temporarily insane.

Drugs and alcohol may have had something to do with it, but “something shifted, something changed in Brandon Martin’s mind, and he did not have the capacity to think,” Spokane County Public Defender John Rodgers said in his opening statement Monday afternoon.

The seeds may have been sown years earlier, said Rodgers, citing what he said was Martin’s “chaotic childhood, low-normal intelligence and less than a 10th-grade education.”

The diminished-capacity defense Rodgers is mounting could spare Martin confinement in a mental hospital as well as a prison if jurors accept it.

Deputy Prosecutor Jack Driscoll told jurors that Martin, then 18, was simply drunk and angry when he left a teenage party at Baulne’s home and returned with a high-powered rifle.

Martin’s blood-alcohol level was 0.17 percent two hours after the crime.

He had been drinking for hours, before and during the party, Driscoll and Rodgers agreed. They said Martin also smoked marijuana at the party and abused the prescription drug Oxycontin by crushing it into a more potent form.

In addition, Rodgers said, Martin began the day with anesthesia for an aborted surgery on one of his fingers.

Driscoll said Martin was angry because he thought people at the party didn’t like him, that someone stole his marijuana pipe, and because Baulne broke out a window in Martin’s car when he tried to leave.

Baulne was trying to keep Martin from leaving, fearing he would return with a gun, Driscoll said.

When Martin returned about a half-hour later, about 2:30 a.m., he kicked in the front door of Baulne’s home and immediately shot Morris in the neck at close range as others ran for cover. Morris began to protest his innocence and died before completing his sentence – “I didn’t have nothing …” – Driscoll said.

Then, Driscoll said, Martin chambered another round in the .44-caliber, lever-action rifle and pursued Corey to a basement bedroom. Corey tried to hold the bedroom door closed until Martin fired a round through it, and was quickly shot in the neck when Martin entered the room, Driscoll told jurors.

Baulne, who had been hiding in a closet in the bedroom, rushed at Martin and wasn’t hit when Martin fired at him, according to the deputy prosecutor. Driscoll said Martin chambered another round, but was overpowered by Baulne and another young man.

Rodger said Martin remembers nothing between having Baulne break out his car window and waking up in a hospital.