Nine months to the day after a Mohave County judge denied Abe Hamadeh’s election challenge in the race for Arizona Attorney General, the Arizona Supreme Court issued an order to that judge to sign off “forthwith” on two overdue judgments in the case, one of which dates back to Dec. 23, 2022.
The order signed by Chief Justice Robert Brutinel involves a petition for special action Hamadeh filed last month in an effort to move forward with his challenge against Kris Mayes without continuing to wait for Judge Lee Jantzen of the Mohave County Superior Court to get around to signing the long-delayed judgments.
The second of the two judgments involves Jantzen’s July 14 denial of Hamadeh’s Jan. 3 motion for a new trial.
Such judgments, often referred to as appealable judgments, are necessary under court rules for a party to pursue an appeal of a superior court decision. Hamadeh also hoped the petition would convince the seven supreme court justices to order for a new trial in Hamadeh’s case against Mayes without further delay.
But the petition, which skipped over the Arizona Court of Appeals, did not pass muster with the justices who, according to Brutinel’s order, considered Hamadeh’s filing en banc.
Brutinel noted Hamadeh’s petition for special action “misrepresented” efforts undertaken to obtain the signed judgments from Jantzen. Therefore, by “unnecessarily” filing the petition it required Mayes and Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes to incur “unnecessary expense” to respond.
This justified an award of attorneys’ fees incurred by Mayes and Fontes, the order states. The amount will be decided at a later date.
Once Jantzen files the judgments from the first trial and his denial of a new trial then Hamadeh can move forward with filing an opening brief to the Court of Appeals. This can be done on an expedited manner, Brutinel noted.
Until then, the justices provided a bit of advice to the parties.
“As a final matter, the Court is mindful of the difficulties presented in this extraordinarily close election,” Brutinel noted. “Notwithstanding these difficulties, the Court advises both sides to focus on the important legal and factual issues presented here and refrain from disparaging their opponents.”
The chief justice then referenced a section of the Arizona Rules of the Supreme Court and a lawyer’s creed of professionalism.
Hamadeh came out of a statewide recount only 280 votes behind Mayes, with more than 70,000 ballots reported as having no vote cast in the attorney general race. He has sought to have those ballots examined and retabulated as part of his election challenge.
In a statement, Hamadeh expressed surprise at the supreme court’s ruling, but added he and his co-contestors remain undaunted in their effort to have every lawfully cast vote counted in the race for Arizona’s top lawyer and prosecutor.
“Unless every single legal vote is counted, every citizen’s choice is diluted,” the statement reads. “We have been extremely cautious about the statement of fact in our cases, arguing only what we know with certainty, we can prove and ultimately hope to have our day in court to present the evidence.”
The 2022 attorney general’s race has been deemed the closest election in Arizona history. Hamadeh’s statement pointed to the fact that key evidence about tabulation mistakes in Pinal County was not disclosed to his legal team or Jantzen at or prior to the December 2022 trial.
“This fight is much bigger than what we originally thought,” he said. “This is not only a fight to ensure votes are counted but whether government officials will now be emboldened to withhold evidence and delay its access in order to subvert the true will of the people.”
READ MORE:
Hamadeh Files New Arguments In Hopes AZ Supreme Court Takes Election Case