Iron County man spared death penalty in double murder

CEDAR CITY — Martin Chris Nelson sat quietly in the courtroom Friday, appearing unaffected — tall with glasses, mostly blank-faced and calm.

But to the family and friends of the two men he murdered, his is "the face of evil."

A judge was prepared to consider adding Nelson, 45, to the list of inmates on Utah's death row for shooting Chad Grijalva and Derek Davis multiple times in 2007 and burying them in a shallow grave under a shed on his property in Beryl, Iron County.

But the same family members who had denounced him helped spare him the death penalty Friday because they didn't want to endure years of death row appeals.

"I don't want to do this anymore," Grijalva's mother, Pennie Grijalva, told the Deseret News. "I don't want to spend the rest of my life going to court for appeal hearings. I had so much anxiety, … my mind can't think clearly. The only way we can move forward is to have him put away."

In December, a jury convicted Nelson of two counts of capital murder. Prosecutors had considered the murders a death penalty case from the beginning, and families of the two men — who were close friends from childhood — had agreed with their decision to seek the death penalty.

The family members changed their minds, however, in an effort to move the case forward, Pennie Grijalva said.

Prosecutor Scott Garrett on Friday recommended a sentence of life without the possibility of parole, and 5th District Judge G. Michael Westfall agreed. Nelson was ordered to serve two consecutive terms of life in prison without parole, in addition to a concurrent one-to-15-year term for theft involving the stolen gun he had used to shoot the men.

The two men, who were both 34, went missing on Oct. 24, 2007, after they had told family members they were going to Cedar City to run errands. They never returned.

The last call made by Grijalva was traced to Martin's cell phone, leading investigators to focus on him.

Martin was arrested in November 2007 for failing to register as a sex offender, drug possession and possession of a dangerous weapon. During a search of his property in Beryl, Iron County, sheriff's deputies spotted Davis' truck. It had been partially dismantled and stripped down to the frame.

The bodies of Davis and Grijalva were found on Nov. 17, 2007, buried in a shallow grave under a shed. Deputies said Nelson had shot the men several times with a .22-caliber rifle he had bought for $10 from a friend who knew it was stolen.