After the Grants remarried, Doug and Faylene (separately and together) had maintained close telephone contact with the broken-hearted Hilary, who had moved out of the Valley to her parents' home in northern Arizona after the breakup.
Juan Martinez didn't want the jury to accept the Faylene/Hilary relationship as a positive bond between a "spiritual giant" (as both sides dubbed Faylene) and a confused and lovelorn young woman.
Doug and Hilary Grant with their four children (Faylene gave birth to the two younger boys).
Doug and Faylene Grant at Timpanogos Cave National Monument in Utah, shortly before her mysterious 60-foot fall.
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Instead, Martinez alternately portrayed Hilary as someone who "skirt[ed] the truth" if it suited her needs and actually conspired with Doug to somehow murder Faylene.
The latter allegation lacked any evidence.
"Mr. Martinez's march to conviction has to be accomplished over the bodies of just about everybody in the case," Mel McDonald told the jury during his closing argument. "Every person in the case [who] has testified [for Doug] in one way or another is trashed."
That comment was as much on point as anything McDonald said during the trial. But more than any other witness, Hilary Grant felt the brunt of Martinez's take-no-prisoners courtroom style.
Faylene Grant, by the way, did get her wish.
Hilary has legally adopted Faylene's two sons, whom she has been raising since late 2001. Faylene's two older children from a previous marriage, Austin and Jenna, are estranged from the Grants.
But certainly Faylene could not have reckoned that her chosen successor, Hilary (now 27), would, in effect, become a single mother after their husband's murder conviction and incarceration.
Sy Ray was one of Mel McDonald's main targets in the years before the Grant trial finally got under way.
Trial observers speculated about whether Juan Martinez would risk exposing the Gilbert cop's investigative shortcomings firsthand by putting him on the stand. But Ray almost had to testify after the dismal courtroom performance of original Grant case lead investigator James Palmer (now a school resource officer in Gilbert)
Palmer barely could recall from the stand anything about 2001, much less something substantive about the Grant case.
Unlike Palmer, Ray proved to be slick and confident, even smug at times. He held up well, despite McDonald's lengthy and intense efforts to show jurors that Ray's investigation of Doug Grant had been, at best, inadequate and, at worst, malevolent.
Many of the jurors considered Ray a non-entity as a witness. One of the female jurors told New Times that she thought he was "cute."
But the jury's forewoman said she was repulsed by his dubious investigative techniques, including lying to numerous witnesses, sometimes in an apparent effort to get them to turn on Grant.
Still, Doug Grant's chances for an acquittal dimmed when jurors didn't buy the defense theory that a less-than-pristine investigation translated into a kind of conspiracy to "get" Grant.
Sy Ray chose not to interview several potentially key witnesses in this case, including members of Doug Grant's immediate family, some of whom were among the last to communicate with Faylene. Detectives usually are eager to speak with family members and to "lock them in" to their stories. But not Ray, who told the jury that the Grant clan's "bias" would have rendered their statements as untrustworthy.
It was during Ray's days-long testimony that the simmering bad feelings between defense attorney McDonald and Judge Mahoney hit new lows. Relations between the two had been fractured for some time.
Everyone around the courthouse expected that opposing litigants McDonald and Martinez would be at each other's throats during the high-profile Grant case, and they were. But it was the palpable dislike of McDonald by Judge Mahoney that became an even hotter behind-the-scenes topic.
It had become obvious even before the Grant trial started that McDonald had gotten under Mahoney's skin, and it got much worse as things inched along. Maybe it was because McDonald tends to whine when things don't go his way, which they often didn't in this case.
Someone would be hard-pressed to find another trial in which there were more legal objections, most of them lodged by Juan Martinez. One reason is that Mel McDonald tends to ask leading questions of witnesses, some of which other judges might let slide and some a first-year law student would not dare try.
Mahoney's distaste for McDonald was visible at times, especially during her obvious chiding of him during whispered bench conferences. McDonald addressed the situation during a meeting in Mahoney's chambers after she threatened to hold him in contempt if he continued to try to elicit alleged "hearsay" testimony.
"I have sensed for days that you are angry with me," he told the judge (according to a transcript). "It just concerns me because the jury senses this anger, and I think it's happened more than today. I just don't want them to construe this as your belief that my client is guilty or something."
Replied Mahoney, "You don't have any idea what the jury is viewing or seeing. This is all your view of what's going on out there."
Like a schoolboy presenting a shiny apple, Martinez, of course, sided with the judge:
"Even when you have been stern up at the bench, your level of voice is not raised. When these issues arise and you're trying to instruct Mr. McDonald, it seems that the pattern is that he says, 'I can't hear you,' and then you smile at him . . . Your demeanor hasn't changed."
