Hurles v. Superior Court, In and For County of Maricopa, 1
| Decision Date | 01 April 1993 |
| Docket Number | No. 1,CA-SA,1 |
| Citation | 174 Ariz. 331,849 P.2d 1 |
| Parties | Richard HURLES, Petitioner, v. SUPERIOR COURT of the State of Arizona, In and For the COUNTY OF MARICOPA; the Honorable Ruth H. Hilliard, a judge thereof, Respondent Judge, STATE of Arizona, ex rel. Richard ROMLEY, Maricopa County Attorney, Real Party in Interest. 93-0046. |
| Court | Arizona Court of Appeals |
This petition for special action presents a significant threshold question of standing, which we publish this order to address.
The petition arises from a first degree murder prosecution in which the State seeks the death penalty. 1 The defendant petitioner is indigent and represented by appointed counsel. Defendant maintains that he is entitled to two lawyers, not one, in defending a capital case, and asks us to find that the trial judge abused her discretion by declining to appoint him a second lawyer.
The real party in interest is the State of Arizona, represented by the office of the Maricopa County Attorney. That office has declined to take a position on defendant's request, properly acknowledging that it lacks standing in the selection of defendant's counsel. See, e.g., Knapp v. Hardy, 111 Ariz. 107, 112, 523 P.2d 1308, 1313 (1974) ().
Although the real party in interest has thus chosen not to respond to defendant's arguments, a response has been filed on behalf of the trial judge. The Attorney General, claiming that the trial judge's status as nominal respondent entitles her to defend the validity of her challenged order, has argued in a responsive pleading in the trial judge's name that her denial of second counsel was correct under the circumstances of this case. 2
At oral argument on the petition for special action, this Court questioned the trial judge's standing to appear. We also discussed the Attorney General's practice of relieving the County Attorney as counsel for the State at the appellate stage of criminal prosecutions, and questioned whether, by appearing as counsel for the trial judge, the Attorney General may escape the ban on the prosecution attempting to influence the selection of defendant's counsel. We extended the time for oral argument to permit counsel to address these issues, and we permitted further argument in supplemental memoranda. We now rule.
Pursuant to Rule 2(a), Rules of Procedure for Special Actions, the trial court must be named as a nominal respondent in any petition for special action that challenges the validity of a trial court ruling. 3 Such status is a formality, however, that does not necessitate a responsive appearance by that court. The question thus arises whether--or under what circumstances--the trial court may properly respond.
To address that question, we distinguish two sorts of responses: One, in defending a challenged ruling, asserts the general validity of an underlying administrative practice, policy, or local rule. The second, in defending a challenged ruling, asserts the validity of a trial judge's resolution of a particular issue in a single case. We may call these responses, in shorthand, the "defense-of-policy" response and the "I-ruled-correctly" response. This distinction has only gradually come to surface in the three previous cases on point.
The "defense-of-policy" response is illustrated by the first of the pertinent cases, Fenton v. Howard, 118 Ariz. 119, 575 P.2d 318 (1978). There the presiding domestic relations judge of the Superior Court in Pima County had denied a litigant access to Conciliation Court counseling records that the Conciliation Court regarded as confidential. When the litigant challenged the presiding judge's order by special action, the judge filed a response. In permitting the response, the supreme court emphasized that the trial judge appeared in an administrative, policy-defending, role. The court stated:
We hold that a judge does have the right to appear and to be represented in a special action against him, where the judge is a named respondent.... In the instant case, the right of the judge to appear and to be represented is especially important because the judge named as respondent is the head of the Conciliation Court, and he is therefore vitally concerned with the outcome of the Special Action. It is the judge's prerogative to appear and argue for a result which would not hamper the effective functioning of the Conciliation Court.
Id. at 121, 575 P.2d at 320 (citation omitted).
There are two ways to interpret Fenton. One is to isolate the broad first sentence from the remainder of the quoted passage and take it to establish a trial judge's unequivocal right to respond to a special action, whatever the nature of the decision the judge seeks to defend. Our court interpreted Fenton in this manner in State ex rel. Dean v. City Court, 123 Ariz. 189, 598 P.2d 1008 (App.1979), though the court criticized the result it felt constrained to reach.
In Dean, a city magistrate appeared in special action proceedings in the superior court and court of appeals to defend his dismissal of a traffic citation in the municipal court. The judge's pleading invoked no administrative policy and was merely of the "I-ruled-correctly" sort. The Dean court condemned the impropriety that arises when
the trial judge, that impartial dispenser of justice ... stands before the appellate tribunal to defend his ruling and his honor. The trial judge is no longer impartial. He is an adversary and an advocate....
Id. at 191, 598 P.2d at 1010. However, the court admitted the judge's response because it interpreted Fenton as categorically permitting a special action response by any nominal-respondent judge.
A second--and we believe more accurate--way to read Fenton is to ground its holding in its facts. The Fenton court approved a responsive pleading in a case where the judicial respondent, acting as a judicial administrator, was defending the policy of confidential counseling in the Conciliation Court. Because Fenton involved a "defense-of-policy" response, the court neither considered nor decided the validity of an "I-ruled-correctly" response. This distinction, which was overlooked in Dean, was recognized in Dunn v. Superior Court, 160 Ariz. 311, 772 P.2d 1164 (App.1989).
In Dunn, the presiding civil judge of the Superior Court in Maricopa County responded to a special action that challenged an order by which he had rejected a notice of change of judge. In accepting his response, we observed that its purpose was to inform this court that the challenged order reflected his standard administrative practice and to explain the administrative policies and concerns that underlay that practice. We expressly distinguished such a judicial response from the response criticized in Dean, stating:
[I]f we decide that the challenged order was made without authority, the daily administrative policies of the civil presiding judge in reviewing notices of change of judge and in assigning cases could be affected. Under these circumstances, the respondent judge has a legitimate administrative interest in appearing and defending those administrative policies. He is properly before this court as an advocate.
Id. at 314, 772 P.2d at 1167 (emphasis added).
In this case, we apply the distinction that was latent in Fenton but patent in Dunn. We hold that it is proper for a judge named as a respondent in a special action to file a responsive pleading if the purpose of the response is to explain or defend an administrative practice, policy, or local rule, but that it is improper for a judge to respond merely to advocate the correctness of an individual ruling in a single case. 4
Judges, of course,...
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Hurles v. Ryan
...part of the judge. State ex rel. Dean v. City Court, 123 Ariz. 189, 598 P.2d 1008, 1011 (App.1979) ; see also Hurles v. Superior Court, 174 Ariz. 331, 849 P.2d 1, 2 (App.1993). In this case, however, Judge Hilliard appeared and filed a responsive pleading defending her ruling. The judge wa......
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...in interest, the State of Arizona, declined to respond to the petition because it lacked standing to do so. Hurles v. Superior Court, 174 Ariz. 331, 849 P.2d 1, 2 (Ariz.Ct.App.1993). However, the petition named the trial judge, Ruth Hilliard, as the respondent, as required by Arizona law. A......
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