Federal prosecutors push to keep jurisdiction in Tucson killing case

The criminal case against a man accused in a deadly Tucson crime spree should stay under federal jurisdiction because handing him to local prosecutors “is not in the interests of justice,” a new federal court filing says.

Julio Aguirre — a 42-year-old ex-con who was previously deported to Mexico after an earlier term in an Arizona prison — faces multiple charges, including first-degree murder, prohibited possession of a firearm and burglary stemming from a hours-long crime spree in late June in a midtown neighborhood.

A hearing set for Monday before U.S. District Judge Rosemary Márquez will decide whether Aguirre is required to be presented in state court to face prosecution by the Pima County Attorney’s Office.

County and federal prosecutors have been at odds since Aguirre was taken into federal custody.

Aguirre was deported from the United States in 2013, but was again living in the United States when authorities say he shot and killed 70-year-old Ricky Miller Sr. during an attempted carjacking on June 30. The three-hour crime spree included armed home invasions. Aguirre was hospitalized after police found him hiding in a shed, where federal authorities took him into custody from the hospital, according to Pima County Attorney Laura Conover.

A Pima County grand jury indicted Aguirre on July 25, on first-degree murder charges in the death of Miller and on charges including attempted robbery, aggravated assault and burglary related to the crime spree, which victimized six local residents. But Conover has said county prosecutors’ access to Aguirre has been limited, prompting her office to sue the federal government to gain access to him for the local criminal case. Conover has said she worries Aguirre will be deported again before facing prosecution by her office.

The County Attorney’s Office said in an Aug. 15 court filing that communication between her office and the federal government has been “inconsistent, contradictory, and devoid of factual or legal support.”

“Because the United States has refused to produce and make Aguirre available for an initial appearance and arraignment on the Arizona charges, the State cannot prosecute the criminal charges against him under the State Indictment,” Conover said in an Aug. 15 application for writ of habeas corpus.

“The United States’s decision to hamstring the State’s prosecution of Aguirre also irreparably harms the victims whom it continues to ignore,” she said.

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After Aguirre allegedly shot Miller while attempting to steal his truck, Aguirre pointed his gun at two witnesses to the alleged murder, the county prosecutor’s office has said. He then broke into the home of a Tucson couple in their late 70s, threatened them with the gun, “and tried to get them to drive him to Nogales.” Their daughter and son-in-law live nearby, the county says, and the son-in-law “eventually helped his parents-in-law escape.”

The couple’s daughter, in a signed affidavit, says her parents “experienced significant effects as a results of the trauma of the incident,” and that she fears “that (my mother) and my father’s memories of the incident could deteriorate with time,” citing her mother was recently diagnosed with a condition, injury or disease that was redacted from the court filing.

This is in part why the county argues that the DOJ’s refusal to hand Aguirre over means there’s a risk that “Aguirre cannot be held fully accountable for his crimes.”

But Timothy Courchaine, the U.S. attorney for Arizona, has previously said Aguirre committed crimes under federal jurisdiction, “starting with illegal immigration, escalating to prohibited possession of a firearm, and culminating in the death of an innocent individual,” which is “why the United States Attorney’s Office takes this matter so seriously.”

In a filing last week, Courchaine told the court that parallel state and federal prosecutions “would be fraught with pitfalls that could impact the integrity of each of our cases.” He cites differences in pretrial procedures between state and federal court.

“Therefore, in order to protect the integrity of the Federal case, as well as any subsequent County prosecution, the interests of justice will best be served by completing the Federal prosecution of Aguirre before he is transferred to the State to answer the County’s charges there,” Courchaine said.

Courchaine also said the county lacks a legal basis to demand Aguirre be transferred for state prosecution, and that there is no “statutory or constitutional basis” for the County’s Attorney’s Office’s demand.

He also said the county’s “purported irreparable injury based on the State victims not being federal victims is a red herring,” because they remain victims under federal prosecution.