A Yuma County woman is challenging the method used to empanel the state grand jury which indicted her last year, and if she is successful, dozens of other criminal prosecutions could be impacted across Arizona.
Alma Yadira Juarez was indicted Dec. 7, 2020 by the 87th State Grand Jury for one count of felony ballot abuse which allegedly occurred during the August 2020 primary election. Of the 13 state grand jurors in attendance when Assistant Attorney General Todd Lawson presented evidence in the case, the indictment (known as a true bill) was supported on a 9 to 4 vote.
But Juarez’s attorney alleges officials with the Maricopa County Superior Court have released records showing violations of state law and court rules in how the state grand jury was empaneled a few months earlier.
On Oct. 12, attorney Timothy Eckstein of Osborn Maledon PA filed a Motion to Remand to the Grand Jury due to the deficiencies with the state grand jury process. Several defense attorneys told Arizona Daily Independent they are reviewing Eckstein’s filing in hopes of pursuing similar challenges.
State law provides for the empanelment of a state grand jury which normally serves for six months to investigate and return indictments for certain offenses involving statewide interests. In turn, the Arizona Supreme Court has established rules for the residency composition of the jurors to ensure fair and proportional representation among metropolitan and rural parts regions of Arizona.
The court rules in place when the Maricopa County Superior Court initiated steps in July 2020 to empanel the 87th State Grand Jury were based on 2010 U.S. Census population data. It resulted in the names of 1,198 prospective jurors being compiled by the court, with 706 names pulled from Maricopa County, 190 from Pima County, and 302 total from the other 13 counties.
Juarez’s filing notes those 302 prospective jurors from the 13 non-metropolitan counties were also selected in accordance with Census population data, with a low of 3 names from Greenlee County to a high of 19 names from Pinal County. Yuma County, where Juarez resides, accounts for 35 of the 302.
The state grand jury’s assignment judge, who was also the presiding judge of the Maricopa County Superior Court, sent a questionnaire to each prospective juror. From those, 786 completed questionnaires were returned to the court, out of which 653 were deemed qualified to serve based on age, citizenship, residence, lack of felony conviction, or permanent medical disability.
Under the rules in place, the assignment judge should have then randomly selected 150 people -75 from Maricopa County and 75 from the other 14 counties- to receive a secondary questionnaire to reconfirm eligibility and identify financial, employment, travel, and childcare hardship issues.
The list would have then been weaned down further by the assignment judge, and the remaining names summoned to appear in person in Maricopa County for further questioning before a 26-member grand jury was empaneled.
But Eckstein alleges Maricopa County court officials provided records showing the 87th State Grand Jury was empaneled without following the rules for selecting which 150 prospective grand jurors received a secondary questionnaire.
According to the records, instead of 75 (or 50 percent) of the secondary questionnaires going to Maricopa residents and 75 (the other 50 percent) split among all other counties, 108 (72 percent) were sent to Maricopa and 42 (26 percent) to other counties, including 27 to Pima County.
Eventually the assignment judge narrowed the list to 67 prospective jurors from which 26 were empaneled Aug. 8. Only 1 of the 26 was from a county other than Maricopa or Pima counties, resulting in “a substantial underrepresentation” of non-metropolitan counties, Eckstein argues.
Court rules, the motion to remand states, require state grand juries be selected from a pool of prospective jurors “based on reasonably proportional representation” to ensure a fair cross section of Arizona’s population is represented.
“That is, the Supreme Court does not want state grand juries made up disproportionately of residents of one part of the state making the all-important decision whether to indict a person from another part of the state,” Eckstein argues. “The (Maricopa) Superior Court has discretion in winnowing down that number of prospective jurors, but it cannot do so in a way that effectively negates the proportional representation requirement.”
How or why the Maricopa County Superior Court ended up sending secondary questionnaires to only 15 residents outside of Maricopa or Pima Counties is unclear, Eckstein noted in the motion. Nor is it clear how only one resident outside Arizona’s two most populous counties ended up on a grand jury given the Arizona Supreme Court rules.
“Whatever the explanation, it does not comport with the express requirements or the intent of Rule 12.22 to have a State Grand Jury that is only 3.8 percent from Arizona’s thirteen counties that make up nearly 25 percent of the State’s population…” the motion states, adding that “there is no evidence that the (Maricopa) Superior Court intended to marginalize the residents of Arizona’s rural counties” through a non-compliant process.
[RELATED ARTICLE: San Luis School Board Member Facing More Charges Related To Election Fraud]
But in the end, Eckstein is asking Judge Bruce Nelson of the Yuma County Superior Court, who is now hearing Juarez’s case, to dismiss the indictment and remand it to a new grand jury to redetermine probable cause. The motion also notes the racial makeup of the 87th Grand Jury included only 3 Hispanic residents (11.5 percent), despite the fact Arizona’s population was nearly 32 percent Hispanic as of the 2010 Census.
Todd Lawson, Assistant Attorney General, can defend the Juarez indictment by responding to the motion, or he can take matter before a new state grand jury. Lawson has a few weeks to file a response with Nelson.
Juarez was indicted along with Guillermina Fuentes, a member of the San Luis School Board in Yuma County. Fuentes originally faced a sole felony count of ballot abuse, but that charge was dismissed after Lawson made a presentation last month to the 89th State Grand Jury which indicted Fuentes on four charges related to election fraud.
