Martz

WALLA WALLA — A man accused of killing a Whitman College employee in July 2019 is expected to plead guilty Wednesday in Walla Walla County Superior Court to first-degree murder as part of an agreement dismissing a vehicle theft charge.

Colby J. Hedman, 24, which Pendleton police list as a transient from the Heppner area, was to have his trial on May 26, but the state’s Supreme Court last week ordered no jury trials take place until after July 6.

Hedman’s bail was set at $1 million in September after he was extradited from Baker County in connection with the slaying of Kyle Martz, 35, of Walla Walla, in July.

Hedman admitted to police at his arrest that he struck Martz with an ax multiple times before stealing his car and fleeing to Oregon, where he was arrested trying to elude police.

In exchange for the guilty plea, prosecutors will recommend a sentence of 25 years in prison.

Hedman’s standard sentencing range for the crime is between 20.83 and 27.75 years and a maximum of life imprisonment, as he has one prior conviction. The vehicle theft would have added about another year, according to Walla Walla County Prosecuting Attorney Jim Nagle.

Nagle said delays and caseload were not the reason for entertaining a plea bargain instead of going to trial.

A family member was among several who wrote to Nagle, concerned about the plea deal and demanding Hedman face a jury trial. The email was forwarded to the U-B.

“We as a family are asking you to please reconsider your offer to him. Please try him in court, and get my family and especially Kyle the justice we deserve for this horrible and disgusting crime.”

Nagle replied that, if taken to trial, Hedman “likely would plead ‘not guilty by reason of insanity,’” as the defense has a psychologist’s opinion Hedman was insane when he committed the crimes.

Prosecutors are awaiting another opinion from a state psychologist, but if that person also determines Hedman was insane, it would be likely a jury would find Hedman “not guilty by reason of insanity.”

Hedman then would be sent to Eastern State Hospital, and the hospital would report every six months to the court on his condition, but there would be no guarantee regarding how long Hedman would remain there.

“On the other hand, if the jury did find him guilty and not insane at the time of his crimes, one must hope that there are no errors in the trial, the introduction of evidence, or any of the things that can happen in a trial, and hope that over the ensuing years none of the numerous appeals the defense will file have any merit and force the matter to be tried again,” Nagle wrote.

If, for some reason, Hedman does not plead guilty to first-degree murder this week, prosecutors could amend the charge to aggravated first-degree murder, which carries a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of release.

Nagle wrote that was “being used as an inducement to obtain a guilty plea.”

“We would have pretrial hearings determining the validity of his confession to police, defense motions to suppress evidence seized from him and all of the other issues that lead up to trial,” Nagle wrote. “The matter would then be tried to a jury.”

With the plea bargain, a judge will determine whether Hedman’s “guilty plea is appropriate and is in the interest of justice,” Nagle stated.

“A guilty plea eliminates years of appeals and the possibility of having to retry the case again,” Nagle wrote. “It provides closure. Many people have expressed to me that they wished that their cases did not take years to work their way through the appeals courts before getting some final closure.”

Officials who investigated the crime suspect Hedman and Martz didn’t know each other.

Later, on the same day records state Martz was killed, court records allege that Hedman broke into a home on Taggert Lane in Oregon and tried to steal a different vehicle, which he totaled after leading police on a chase that ended in his arrest.

He pleaded not guilty in January, after competency restoration treatment at Eastern State Hospital.