Arizona immigration law: Rick Romley spells out rules to handle cases

by Michael Kiefer - Jul. 9, 2010 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley on Thursday laid out the ground rules for law-enforcement officers within his jurisdiction who want to charge crimes under Arizona's new immigration law.

The law, known as Senate Bill 1070, creates three new misdemeanor crimes: willful failure to complete or carry an alien-registration document, unlawful stopping to hire and pick up undocumented immigrants for work, and unlawful transporting, moving, concealing, harboring or shielding of illegal immigrants.

But because the law is based on federal immigration statutes, it carries some baggage. Among other things, investigators must prove the offender is older than 14 and has been in the country more than 30 days.

And under state law, a simple confession is not enough; prosecutors must establish corpus delicti; that is, a body of evidence other than confession that shows a crime has been committed.

To put that into perspective, consider that the first two cases tried for conspiracy to commit human smuggling under the 2005 "Coyote Law" were thrown out for failure to prove corpus delicti. Subsequent cases were settled by plea agreement rather than by going to trial.

SB 1070 makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally. It states that an officer engaged in a lawful stop, detention or arrest shall, when practicable, ask about a person's legal status when reasonable suspicion exists that the person is in the U.S. illegally.

The policy statement distributed to law-enforcement agencies reads, "In order to successfully prosecute a violation of these statutes, the State must be able to prove each element of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt. For most of these offenses, that includes proof that the suspect was in the United States in violation of state and federal law. To sustain prosecution, a submittal must recite sufficient evidence, independent of the suspect's statements, to sustain each and every element of the offense, including the elements of applicable federal law."

The document then provides a list of questions to ask suspects and a checklist of requirements in order to charge the crimes.

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