State v. Sosa

This opinion is subject to revision before final
publication in the Pacific Reporter.
2011 UT 12
IN T HE
SUPREME C OURT OF THE STATE OF UTAH
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STATE OF UTAH,
Plaintiff and Appellee,
v.
MAURICIO SOSA,
Defendant and Appellant.
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Filed March 1, 2011
No. 20091033
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Third District Court, West Jordan
The Honorable Mark S. Kouris
No. 081402177
On Certification from the Utah Court of Appeals
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Attorneys:
Mark L. Shurtleff, Att’y Gen., Jeffrey S. Gray, Asst. Att’y Gen.,
Joseph S. Hill, Salt Lake City, for plaintiff
Clay A. Alger, Salt Lake City, for defendant
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J USTICE LEE, opinion of the Court:
¶1 	On August 11, 2008, Judge Mark Kouris, acting as magi-
strate, issued a warrant authorizing a search of Mauricio Sosa’s
residence. Sandy City Police searched Sosa’s residence on August
14, 2008, and arrested him based on evidence obtained during the
search. Sosa argues that the search warrant was flawed because
the magistrate, after signing the warrant, returned the only copies
of the original warrant and associated documents to the warrant-
seeking police officer and instructed him to file the documents
with the clerk’s office. This was a violation of Rule 40(i)(1) of the
Utah Rules of Criminal Procedure, which requires a magistrate,
“[a]t the time of issuance” of a search warrant, to “retain and seal
a copy of the search warrant, the application and all affidavits or
other recorded testimony on which the warrant is based.” The
rule further requires the magistrate to file, “within a reasonable

STATE v. SOSA
Opinion of the Court
No. 20091033 	2
time,” the “sealed documents in court files which are secured
against access by the public.”
¶2 	Sosa filed a motion to suppress in the district court. The
court held that the magistrate complied with the retention re-
quirements of Rule 40(i)(1) because the officer was “acting as [the
magistrate’s] agent” when he carried the warrant materials to the
clerk’s office. Sosa filed this appeal. On appeal, Sosa does not chal-
lenge the validity of the search warrant itself. Nor does he allege
that the magistrate’s error adversely affected his substantial rights
or that the officer did anything inappropriate. He nevertheless ar-
gues that the magistrate’s error requires suppression of the evi-
dence seized by the police.
¶3 	On appeal, we review the trial court’s interpretation of
Rule 40 for correctness. Cf. Ostler v. Buhler, 1999 UT 99, ¶ 5, 989
P.2d 1073. Given the context in which Rule 40(i)(1) arose, we can-
not sanction the district court’s officer-as-agent rationale. The rule
was crafted following our decision in Anderson v. Taylor, 2006 UT
79, 149 P.3d 352, in which we raised concerns about law enforce-
ment officers retaining control over a warrant and supporting do-
cumentation. 	Law 	enforcement 	officers 	certainly 	do 	serve 	as
agents or officers of the court under some circumstances. But in
Anderson we were concerned with law enforcement having inde-
pendent custody of warrants and 	supporting 	documentation,
“leav[ing] the court without any record of the [warrant] or the
materials supporting its issuance” and “allow[ing] for the possi-
bility that affidavits and other court records may be mishandled
or even altered without detection.” Id. ¶ 22. To allow law en-
forcement officers to substitute for magistrates in their responsi-
bility under Rule 40(i)(1) to retain and file warrant materials
would undermine the animating rationale for our holding in An-
derson.
¶4 	Sosa’s appeal fails, however, in light of our decision on a
similar issue in State v. Dominguez, 2011 UT 11, __ P.3d __. In Do-
minguez we held that “[i]n the absence of any contention that the
magistrate’s [Rule 40(i)(1)] error in any way infringed upon [the
defendant’s] substantial rights, we are obliged to disregard the
error” as harmless under Rule 30 of the Utah Rules of Criminal
Procedure. Id. ¶ 30 (internal quotation marks omitted). Rule 30
dictates that “[a]ny error, defect, irregularity or variance which
does not affect the substantial rights of a party shall be disre-

Cite as: 2011 UT 12
Opinion of the Court
3 	No. 20091033
garded.” Because Sosa has not demonstrated (or even alleged)
that his substantial rights were adversely affected by the magi-
strate’s error, we uphold the ruling of the district court that sup-
pression is not required.
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¶5 	Chief Justice Durham, Associate Chief Justice Durrant, Jus-
tice Parrish, and Justice Nehring concur in Justice Lee’s opinion.