Divided Court Ruling Quashes Murder Evidence Says Search Warrant Used To Collect Evidence On Reservation Is Invalid

A divided Idaho Supreme Court has refocused its conclusions from a 1994 decision that suppressed evidence taken from the Nez Perce Indian Reservation and used in a Lewiston murder case.

The earlier ruling focused on whether officers had jurisdiction to search a home on the reservation, where the tribe is sovereign.

But a 3-2 opinion issued in its place Thursday dropped the whole issue of state jurisdiction in Indian country and instead found the search warrant the officers used was invalid because it was not signed by a judge.

The case involves Marcus W. Mathews, who entered a conditional guilty plea to first-degree murder for the January 1992 slaying of his estranged wife, Holly Morris, who was found dead in her Lewiston home.

Mathews, a member of the Nez Perce Tribe now being held in an out-of-state prison, reserved the right to appeal 2nd District Judge Ron Schilling’s denial of his motion to suppress evidence. The murder weapon and a pair of sneakers that matched tracks found at the crime scene were taken from the reservation home of Mathews’ sister and brother-in-law, Donna and Bill Henry.

The Supreme Court in July 1994 overturned Schilling’s decision, ruling that “execution of state search warrants on reservation land infringes on tribal sovereignty and self-government.”

But it withdrew that opinion Thursday in favor of a decision finding that the search warrant used to find the evidence against Mathews was invalid because it lacked the signature of a magistrate or district judge.

“Failure to supply the signature once it is challenged will vitiate any further search under the warrant. ‘Evidence’ obtained in such an unauthorized search is not admissible,” Justice Charles McDevitt wrote for the majority.

In dissent, Justice Gerald Schroeder wrote that a law passed in 1994 indicated a determination of probable cause, not a judge’s signature, is the critical element of a search warrant.

He said the problem in the Mathews case could have been resolved by the officer phoning the judge who was issuing the warrant and getting authority to sign the judge’s name, then getting the judge’s own signature later.

Justice Cathy Silak agreed with Schroeder that a judge’s determination of probable cause is more important than the lack of a signature on a warrant.