Martinez Will Stand Trial in City Credit-Card Case

San Diego City Councilman Uvaldo Martinez was ordered Tuesday to stand trial on 24 felony counts of misappropriating and falsely accounting for public funds in connection with his alleged misuse of a city-issued credit card.

Municipal Judge Joseph K. Davis rejected defense arguments that prosecutors established no motive for Martinez to cover up his true guests at a series of costly meals in 1984 and 1985 and that the records he allegedly falsified had no legal standing.

Davis dismissed four counts from the indictment filed against Martinez in March after Deputy Dist. Atty. Allan Preckel conceded that testimony Tuesday by a restaurant waitress had undermined the prosecution version of the meal on which the charges were based.

But the judge ordered Martinez to appear later this month for a hearing on whether he remains eligible for court-appointed counsel “in view of the purported change in financial circumstances of the defendant”--an apparent reference to a just-enacted pay raise increasing council members’ salaries from $35,000 to $40,000 per year.

Raymond J. Coughlan was appointed as Martinez’s defense counsel during a grand jury investigation last fall after the councilman declared he was unable to afford a private attorney.

Martinez, who would lose his post if convicted on any of the charges, showed no emotion when Davis bound him over for trial in Superior Court.

“I’ll be there,” Martinez told reporters after the hearing. “I’ve always said I’ll be there.”

He said testimony during the preliminary hearing, in which a parade of witnesses described their presence or absence from meals figuring in the indictment, made him more certain he will be vindicated when the case goes to trial.

With the dismissal of four counts concerning a meal last July 24 at Dobson’s Bar & Restaurant, Martinez will be tried on charges that he illegally used a city-issued credit card to purchase $1,840 worth of meals and drinks on 20 occasions between November, 1984, and June 1985.

Testimony at the preliminary hearing established that Martinez often had been dining with women with whom he had a social relationship on occasions when he told city auditors he was out with public officials, developers or political supporters discussing city business.

Martinez has blamed sloppy record-keeping for errors in his accountings. But Preckel argued Tuesday that it is clear from the evidence that Martinez knew he was falsifying public records and misusing public funds.

“We’re not talking about inadvertent mistakes, and we’re not talking about mere forgetfulness when these transactions are viewed in their totality and as a pattern,” he said in his closing statement.

Preckel said it stretched credibility to believe, for instance, that Martinez simply forgot about a $131 dinner with attorney Robin Tharp or meals two weeks apart with staff aide Jane Reid that together cost more than $390.

He questioned Martinez’s failure to make any mention in his reports to auditors of two dinners with Deborah Nordstrom, a real estate agent the councilman met last year at a La Jolla bar.

And Preckel said he could not understand Martinez’s “completely overlooking” two meals with Helen Bird, head of the city’s litter control program, who testified before the grand jury that she had a “very, very close” personal relationship with Martinez at the time.

In an unsuccessful move to have the charges against Martinez dismissed, Coughlan argued that the credit-card accounting Martinez gave auditors was not an official record that could be the basis for criminal prosecution.

Coughlan said City Auditor Edward Ryan lacked the authority to require council members to submit monthly accountings of their spending. He noted that Ryan testified it was virtually impossible to separate city business from personal business.

Ryan also testified that regulations in force during the period covered by the indictment left a large measure of discretion to officials in the use of city credit cards.

Preckel, by contrast, asserted that state law established that the credit-card records were an official public account. Despite vagueness in city rules, he added, Martinez should not be allowed to be the sole judge of whether his use of public funds with his credit card was proper or not.

“To permit the defendant a solely subjective standard is to apply no standard whatsoever,” Preckel said. “To apply a subjective standard is tantamount to saying, ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,’ and, ‘It’s city business if I say it is.’ ”

Coughlan repeatedly challenged the allegation that Martinez demonstrated criminal motive or intent in connection with several of the meals that figure in the indictment.

He focused, for instance, on a $402 dinner at Dobson’s in April, 1985. Martinez initially picked up the tab with his city Visa card, but an aide later wrote a personal check for the bill. Martinez is charged with attempted misappropriation of public funds in connection with the bill.

Charlotte Sharpe, at the time a city employee responsible for collecting council members’ credit-card reports, testified that Martinez was under the influence of alcohol when he paid for the meal. Coughlan argued that it was “almost inconceivable” that Martinez would have used his city credit card with Sharpe present at the meal “if he thought there was anything wrong with it.”

Coughlan insisted, too, that Martinez had no reason to hide his meals with Nordstrom, Reid and Bird because each testified that they discussed city business with the councilman when they dined together. Without a motive, he argued, Martinez could not be said to have knowingly falsified his credit-card reports.

“Basically, there is no reason to falsify it,” he said. “It’s immaterial. All he had to do was put down the right names.”

Martinez’s only apparent victory in the preliminary hearing came with the testimony Tuesday of Dana Stine, a waitress who served lunch to the councilman and a guest at Dobson’s last July.

The grand jury had charged Martinez with two counts each of misappropriation and false accounting in connection with the meal. Prosecutors contended that bills totaling $38.06 represented Martinez’s cost of entertaining three women he met at Dobson’s bar one evening.

But Stine testified that notations on the restaurant tabs indicated she had served Martinez and one guest drinks and meals at lunchtime July 24, not in the evening.