PROVO — The murky waters of the already complicated Martin MacNeill murder case have gotten even muddier. Adding to the hundreds of pages of motions and evidence, the state filed a 56-page response to MacNeill’s motion to dismiss the case against him.

The state’s motion, which was filed on Jan. 4, asks the court to strike MacNeill’s original motion from the case or at least deny that motion. On Dec. 17 Randall Spencer and Susanne Gustin, defense attorneys for MacNeill, filed a motion to dismiss the case or disqualify the Utah County Attorney’s Office from prosecuting it. In the 48-page motion, the defense accused the county attorney’s office of withholding information, grooming witnesses and having knowledge of another possible suspect in the case and not notifying them.

MacNeill has been charged in the 2007 death of his wife, Michele MacNeill. She was found unresponsive in a bathtub in the couple’s home several days after having plastic surgery.

The motion states the biggest offense was the prosecutors withholding information about Damian MacNeill, the son of Martin and Michele MacNeill. Defense attorneys argue that the state believed Damian MacNeill had homicidal and violent tendencies and were concerned enough to send an email to Damian’s law school informing them that he could be a threat.

In the state’s response, prosecutors wrote that this is not relevant to the case for several reasons, including the fact that the letter was sent to New York University two and a half years after Michele MacNeill’s death and was sent solely as a precaution based on tweets from what appeared to be Damian MacNeill’s Twitter account.

“There is no expression or belief on the part of the investigator that Damian had homicidal feelings at or near the time of Michele’s death,” the prosecutors’ motion states. “Moreover, there is no evidence corroborating any belief that Damian was involved in Michele’s death.”

Damian MacNeill committed suicide in 2010. The state’s motion includes the email that investigator Doug Witney sent to NYU in September 2009.

It states, “To be perfectly clear, Damian MacNeill is not a suspect in the death of his mother. However, at the insistence of MacNeill family members, we entered ‘damianmacneill’ into Google and were shocked at the postings found on his Twitter site, which suggests a propensity to commit indiscriminate violent crimes. … The comments by Damian MacNeill are very troubling wherein he speaks of killing others and the joy of such.”

The letter goes on to say that the county attorney’s office considers Damian MacNeill a “ticking time bomb, someone who has been through a lot in his life and apparently it is coming to a head.” The letter also states that NYU should take whatever action it deems necessary and that the attorney’s office didn’t want to ignore what could be warnings signs of violence to come.

Another major claim in the defense’s original motion is that the county attorney’s office withheld thousands of pages of information from them, information that by law they are entitled too. In their original motion the defense listed 36 different items that the prosecution had not provided them. In their response the county attorney’s office admitted that eight of the items mentioned were neither sent to or made available to the defense through their case file. The motion claims that 15 of the items outlined by the defense were provided to them, that 11 more were available through their open file policy and that two of the items never existed. The motion says there are a few exceptions including a disc of emails from Witney that was only recently discovered. Spencer says that disc includes hundreds more pages of documents that they must now go through.

“The response from the state to our motion supports the fact that they failed to comply with their discovery obligations and it wasn’t until they had to respond to our motion that they went through and found even more documents than the ones we got from Dr. Perper that had not been disclosed,” Spencer said.

In their initial motion, the defense said they had received thousands of pages of information from a thumb drive given to them by Dr. Joshua Perper, an expert witness for the state.

The state’s motion responds to all of the accusations made by the defense and then makes some more. In the motion, the state said the defense acted with “unclean hands” by filing the motion to dismiss, saying it believes the defense attorneys haven’t fulfilled their duty to provide reciprocal discovery to the state, that the defense hasn’t taken part in the state’s open case file policy in order to receive all the documents and evidence in the case and that the defense has not followed court rules in getting discovery they believe they are entitled to.

“Most egregiously, when the state’s lead investigator asked defense counsel to come and review the case file on 12/12/2012 while he was in the investigator’s office, Mr. Spencer refused and stated that his concerns would be outlined in his motion. A motion the state now understands the defense had been working on for over two weeks at the time of this personal invitation,” the motion reads. “This declination, coupled with the defense’s choice to send their motion to the press before the state or the court would have a chance review it, clearly support the inference that the defense was much less interested in actually getting discovery than smearing the state and finding an unjustified method of disposing of the case outside of a trial on the merits and evidence of the case.”

Prosecuting attorney Chad Grunander said they have filed for discovery from the defense multiple times but have yet to receive anything from them. He also said they have never tried to hide anything and that they have invited the defense multiple times to come review the case file.

“We have tried to be as trasnparent as possible,” Grunander said. Spencer says that the state is required to provide discovery to them and that their open case policy does not fulfill that.

The motion also includes information about an invitation to review their case files sent from prosecuting attorney Chad Grunander to Spencer via text message on Dec. 5. The message, which is included in the motion, states, “a local attorney just asked me outside of court about withholding evidence in MacNeill. And he referenced a conversation with you. What’s going on? I know you don’t agree with the filing of charges, but throwing around allegations of misconduct on my part is absolutely uncalled for, unless you have some basis. I would suggest you acquaint yourself with the rules and if you find a problem then take it to court. Again I invite you to our office to review discovery. Chad.”

MacNeill is scheduled to be in court on Jan. 17 for an evidentiary hearing in which both parties will argue their cases for and against dismissal. Spencer says he plans to call witnesses during the hearing to make his case against the county attorney’s office. Grunander says the judge is also likely to rule on the state’s motion for discovery from the defense.