State v. Mathews

Decision Date15 June 1999
Docket Number No. 24605., No. 24604
PartiesSTATE of Idaho, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Marcus MATHEWS, Defendant-Appellant, Marcus W. Mathews, Petitioner-Appellant, v. State of Idaho, Respondent.
CourtIdaho Supreme Court

Clark & Feeney, Boise; Idaho Legal Aid Clinic, Maureen E. Laflin, Supervising Attorney, Moscow, for appellant. V. Lane Jacobson and G. Scott Gatewood, Legal Interns argued.

Hon. Alan G. Lance, Attorney General; Michael A. Henderson, Deputy Attorney General, Boise, for respondent. Michael A. Henderson argued.

SILAK, Justice.

This is an appeal from a district court order denying Marcus Mathews's petition for post-conviction relief. We also review the district court's denial of Mathews's motion to suppress evidence obtained from a search conducted within the exterior boundaries of the Nez Perce Indian Reservation.

I. FACTS AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

On January 16, 1992, Marcus Mathews (Mathews) was arrested and charged with the murder of his estranged wife, Holly Morris (Morris), who was found dead in her home in Lewiston, Idaho. Mathews is an enrolled member of the Nez Perce Indian Tribe, and was living within the Nez Perce Indian Reservation at the time of Morris's death. A few days prior to Mathews's arrest, Corporal Thomas H. Greene (Greene) of the Lewiston Police Department prepared two affidavits in application for search warrants for Mathews's home on the reservation and the home of Mathews's sister and brother-in-law, Donna and Bill Henry (the Henrys), also on the reservation. Officer Greene informed Officer Ed Rolfe (Rolfe) of the Lapwai office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) of the warrants. Officer Rolfe contacted Judge Miles of the Nez Perce Tribal Court and informed her that the warrants were being prepared. Judge Miles told Officer Rolfe she would meet the officers at her office prior to the search to review the warrants pursuant to the Nez Perce Tribal Law and Order Code.

On January 13, 1992, Officer Greene took the affidavits for the search warrants to Nez Perce County Magistrates Perry and Elliott. Judge Perry signed the documents relating to the warrant for Mathews's home and Judge Elliott was given all the documents relating to the search warrant for the Henry residence. Judge Elliott notarized the officer's oath on the Affidavit for Search Warrant and signed all other documents regarding the warrant except the detention order and the search warrant. The warrant and detention order were signed the following day, January 14, 1992, after they had been executed.

The officers from the Lewiston Police Department, accompanied by Deputy Don Taylor of the Nez Perce County Sheriff's Office and a BIA officer, executed the search warrants at the Henry residence on the Nez Perce Indian Reservation without first having them reviewed by Judge Miles. The Lewiston police did confer with the BIA, with tribal prosecutor Elliot Moffett, and with the offices of the Idaho Attorney General and the United States Attorney before executing the warrants. As a result of the searches, the officers recovered the murder weapon and a pair of tennis shoes that matched tracks found at the scene of the crime. Mathews was arrested and charged with first-degree murder.

Mathews moved to suppress the evidence obtained from the Henry residence on the ground that the state authorities lacked jurisdiction to execute a state warrant in Indian country. The motion to suppress did not claim that the lack of a signature on the warrant at the time of its execution was an additional ground supporting suppression. The motion was denied, and on May 29, 1992, pursuant to I.C.R. 11, Mathews entered a conditional plea of guilty preserving the denial of the motion to suppress for appeal. Judgment of Conviction was entered, and Mathews was thereafter sentenced to life imprisonment, with a fixed term of thirty years.

On August 25, 1992, Mathews appealed his conviction claiming that the district court erred in denying his motion to suppress. In a July 1994 opinion, this Court initially held that a state court lacks jurisdiction to issue a search warrant within Indian country. See State v. Mathews, No. 20154 (Idaho filed July 18, 1994) (Mathews I). However, the Court later granted the State's petition for rehearing of that appeal.

Concurrent with his appeal from his Judgment of Conviction, Mathews filed a petition for post-conviction relief. The petition asked the district court to vacate Mathews's sentence due to the involuntariness of his plea. In addition to arguments of prosecutorial, police, and judicial misconduct, Mathews argued in the petition that his counsel was ineffective because he had failed to discover that the search warrant executed at the Henry residence was not signed by a magistrate prior to its execution. In response, the State filed a motion for summary disposition of the petition and, Mathews filed an answer and cross-motion for summary disposition. Following oral argument, the district court granted the State's motion for summary disposition. Mathews also appealed this order.

On appeal from the district court's grant of summary disposition of Mathews's post-conviction petition, this Court was unable to determine from the record whether Ms. Henry, the occupant of the home searched, questioned the validity of the warrant before the search was conducted and if Judge Elliott was aware he had not signed the search warrant. On September 3, 1996, this Court remanded this case to the trial court for a determination of these two issues. On remand, the trial court held an evidentiary hearing and issued findings of fact. The trial court found, in part, that Ms. Henry questioned the validity of the search warrant at the time of its execution by pointing out that the copy was not signed or dated. Officer Greene testified that when Ms. Henry asked about the lack of a signature he intentionally deceived her by representing that the search warrant affidavit, which was signed by the magistrate, was the search warrant. The district court also determined that Judge Elliott was unaware that he had failed to sign the warrant.

Mathews's appeal from the grant of summary disposition of his petition for post-conviction relief was consolidated with the rehearing of Mathews I, No. 20154, and, in a March 1997 opinion withdrawing its July 1994 opinion in Mathews I, this Court held:

Once the lack of a signature is discovered or raised, the search must stop until such time as the lack of a signature may be corrected by the signature of the magistrate. Failure to supply the signature once it is challenged will vitiate any further search under the warrant. "Evidence" obtained in such an unauthorized search is not admissible.
....
Having found the warrant deficient, we need not address the balance of the issues raised on appeal as they are rendered moot.

State v. Mathews, 129 Idaho 865, 870, 934 P.2d 931, 936 (1997) (Mathews II). The Court vacated the district court's summary disposition order and remanded the case to the district court for further proceedings.

On remand, the district court issued an order denying Mathews's petition for post-conviction relief concluding that Mathews had failed to show that his counsel's performance was ineffective. Specifically, the district court held that, although Mathews satisfied the "prejudice" prong of the test for ineffective assistance of counsel, he failed to demonstrate that counsel's failure to pursue a motion to suppress based on the warrant's lack of a signature constituted "deficient performance."

II. ISSUES ON APPEAL

The following issues are raised on appeal:

A. Whether the district court's denial of Mathews's post-conviction petition is inconsistent with this Court's opinion in Mathews II.
B. Whether Mathews was denied the effective assistance of counsel as guaranteed by both the United States and Idaho Constitutions, resulting in an involuntary guilty plea.
C. Whether, in the alternative, Mathews should be entitled to withdraw his guilty plea because the misconduct of the police, prosecution, and magistrate deprived Mathews of his right to due process and a fair trial.
D. Whether Mathews should be entitled to withdraw his guilty plea because the execution of a state court search warrant within Indian country, without tribal court approval, violated Indian tribal sovereignty.
III. STANDARD OF REVIEW

Where the district court denies a petition for post-conviction relief after an evidentiary hearing, rather than summarily, the evidence must be "`viewed most favorably to the trial court's findings.'" Storm v. State, 112 Idaho 718, 720, 735 P.2d 1029, 1031 (1987) (quoting Estes v. State, 111 Idaho 430, 434, 725 P.2d 135, 139 (1986)). Findings supported by competent and substantial evidence produced at the hearing will not be disturbed on appeal. See Holmes v. State, 104 Idaho 312, 313, 658 P.2d 983, 984 (Ct. App.1983)

. Since both parties agreed that no evidentiary hearing was necessary, the standard set forth above applies.

On a denial of a motion to suppress, this Court will overturn a trial court's factual findings only if they are clearly erroneous. See State v. Peightal, 122 Idaho 5, 7, 830 P.2d 516, 518 (1992)

. However, this Court exercises free review over questions of law, including whether the trial court correctly applied the law to the facts. See id.; State v. Weber, 116 Idaho 449, 451-52, 776 P.2d 458, 460-61 (1989).

IV. ANALYSIS

A. Mathews II Decided Only The Propriety Of The District Court's Summary Disposition Of Mathews's Petition For Post-Conviction Relief And Did Not Resolve Issues Of Ineffective Assistance Of Counsel, Judicial And Prosecutorial Misconduct, Or The State Court's Jurisdiction To Issue Search Warrants Within Indian Country.

This Court in Mathews II did not hold that counsel's failure to pursue a motion to suppress based on the belatedly-signed warrant...

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