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SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Supreme Court has upheld the conviction of a man convicted of brutally robbing and murdering a BYU professor in his home in 2009.
The state's high court announced Thursday that it would not overturn 28-year-old Martin Bond's conviction of aggravated robbery and aggravated murder in the death of Kay Mortensen. In its opinion, the court denied all three counts of Bond's appeal: A claim that prosecutors committed misconduct by calling his accomplice to testify against him, complaints that the prosecutor asked leading questions when Bond's co-defendant took the stand, and assertions that Bond's own attorneys failed him by not motioning to merge his two convictions.
The case drew heightened attention in Utah at the time, in part because of Mortensen's position with the Brigham Young University, and also because Mortensen's son and daughter-in-law were initially implicated and charged in his death. Ultimately, however, it was revealed that they themselves had been victims as well on that violent night.
Mortensen was killed in November 2009 when Bond and another man, Benjamin Rettig, drove to Kay's Provo home from Vernal to steal guns. Recognizing Bond, an acquaintance, when he came to the front door, Mortensen let the two men into the house.
Bond and Rettig then pulled out a gun and used zip ties to bind Mortensen's hands, ordering him to hand over the firearms that were stored in a backyard bunker.
After Mortensen took Bond and Rettig to the guns, the two men marched him to an upstairs bathroom and forced him to kneel over a bathtub, killing him by slitting his throat and stabbing his neck with a knife from the kitchen.
Rettig and Bond have each pointed to the other as the one who actually killed Mortensen.
Moments after Mortensen was killed, his son and daughter-in-law, Roger and Pamela Mortensen, arrived at the house. Bond and Rettig bound the couple and took them hostage in the living room, threatening to come after their families if they identified the men to police. It wasn't until after the two men had fled with approximately 20 stolen guns that the couple managed to free themselves and they discovered Mortensen's body.
Related:
Man found guilty in killing of retired BYU professor
A jury found Martin Bond guilty of killing a retired BYU professor during a robbery. (Photo: KSL Photo)It was Bond who kept the cache of stolen guns, the Supreme Court opinion notes, selling some, keeping others, and burying the rest in a Vernal park. About a year after the crime, Bond's ex-wife reported his role in the murder, leading to the arrests of Bond and Rettig.
In his appeal, Bond claimed that Utah County prosecutors committed misconduct by calling Rettig to testify in his trial, despite the fact that Rettig had indicated he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. Though he had agreed to testify in the trial as part of a plea agreement and later received immunity against federal firearms prosecution, Rettig was resistant on the stand, responding to some questions but refusing to answer others.
However, the high court disagreed with Bond that Rettig's appearance and testimony prejudiced the jury against him and that the court erred in not granting a mistrial.
The court also disagreed with Bond's claim that allowing prosecutors to ask Rettig leading questions when he refused to testify did not leave room for Bond to challenge Rettig's account.
Finally, the court determined that Bond's attorneys did not fail him by not asking to have the aggravated kidnapping and aggravated murder charges merged because the motion would have been "futile."
Rettig is currently serving concurrent sentences of 25 years to life and 15 years to life, respectively, after pleading guilty to first-degree felony charges of aggravated murder and aggravated kidnapping.
Following his refusal to testify against Bond despite promises he made in the plea deal, Rettig was also convicted in 2014 of obstructing justice, a third-degree felony. He was sentenced to zero to five years in prison for the charge, with the sentence running concurrently to those he was already serving.
