Judge Katia Miguelina Jiménez postponed the hearings in the case of assassinated journalist Orlando Martínez for 7 December. The case is seen as historic and transcendental as it brings to court several of the key military hierarchy of the Balaguer era. The judge postponed the case in order to give time for the court-appointed physician to evaluate the condition of accused José Isidoro Martínez González, who suffers from lung cancer and Parkinson Disease. El Siglo reported that Martínez González is said to be interned at the military hospital. The judge ordered the presence as witnesses of former President Joaquín Balaguer, Marino Vinicio Castillo, Victor Gómez Bergés, and retired colonel Ernesto Ricourt Regús and former judge Rafael Darío Aristy Castro, as well as retired generals Enrique Pérez y Pérez and Ramón Emilio Jiménez, both former ministers of the Armed Forces for the opening day of the case. Retired General Salvador Lluberes Montas, one of the key accused, attended in a wheel chair, for having suffered a fracture of his left leg. He was released from jail for health reasons, despite having been singled in the investigations as the alleged intellectual author of the crime against the former news magazine editor and newspaper columnist in 1975. He attended the case with his appointed defending lawyers Carlos Balcácer, Gregory Castellanos Ruano, Reynaldo Fermin and Ana Javier.
