Yuma County Attorney v. McGuire
| Decision Date | 18 July 1973 |
| Docket Number | No. 11263,11263 |
| Citation | 512 P.2d 14,109 Ariz. 471 |
| Parties | YUMA COUNTY ATTORNEY, Petitioner, v. The Honorable John A. McGUIRE, Judge of the Superior Court and Oscar C. Williams, Jr., Respondents. |
| Court | Arizona Supreme Court |
Wm. Michael Smith, Yuma County Atty., pro se.
Paul Hunter, Yuma, for respondent Oscar C. Williams, Jr.
The Yuma County Attorney filed a petition for special action with this court, alleging that the Honorable John A. McGuire had improperly granted a motion to suppress in the rape prosecution of Oscar Charles Williams, Jr. Williams is charged with forcible rape with a prior conviction for the October, 1972, rape of a 17-year-old girl. The Yuma County Attorney seeks an order vacating the order granting the motion to suppress. We accept jurisdiction of the petition for special action and grant the relief requested.
The facts relevant to this petition are as follows: On October 8, 1972, the victim reported to the Yuma Police Department that she had been raped by a black male just before midnight on October 7, 1972. She described her assailant and the clothes he wore. On October 9, 1972, she viewed a photographic lineup and identified a photograph of Oscar Charles Williams, Jr., as the man who had raped her. The police then determined Williams's address.
On October 12, 1972, Detective John Gross and the Yuma County Attorney's Office drew up a search warrant for the search of Williams's residence. The object of the search was to seize the clothes worn by the accused at the time of the assault. A justice of the peace was unavailable, so Detective Gross contacted the Honorable William Nabours, Judge of the Superior Court, for the issuance of the search warrant. Judge Nabours reviewed the search warrant and supporting affidavit, put Detective Gross under oath and had him sign the affidavit. Judge Nabours signed the affidavit but, through accident or oversight, failed to sign the search warrant itself. Later that same day, Detective Gross and some other officer served the search warrant on Williams's residence and found highly incriminating evidence.
The defendant filed a motion to suppress on the grounds that the warrant was invalid because it lacked the issuing judge's signature. At the hearing on the motion before Judge McGuire on June 18, 1972, Judge Nabours testified that he recalled when the search warrant was presented to him, that he reviewed the affidavit, that he was satisfied there was probable cause for the warrant, and that he intended by his actions at the time to issue a warrant. Judge McGuire granted the motion to suppress. We are asked to decide if Judge Nabours's inadvertent failure to sign the search warrant affects the warrant's validity.
The statute in question is A.R.S. § 13--1441, the relevant part of...
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...or statutory requirement that the issuing judge, without exception, sign a search warrant); see also Yuma County Attorney v. McGuire, 109 Ariz. 471, 512 P.2d 14, 15-16 (1973) (stating even where the statute required a magistrate's signature, "[w]arrants and the affidavits on which they are ......
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