Maricopa County Superior Court Judge John Rea today granted Attorney General Tom Horne and Kathleen Winn’s request for the campaign finance case the county Attorney was pursuing against them to be dismissed, the Yellow Sheet Report was first to report this afternoon.
In a six-page ruling issued late this afternoon, Rea wrote Secretary of State Ken Bennett was required by state law to forward
the matter to Horne’s office, even though it was about him, and could not take the matter directly to Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery.
“Statutes may be construed broadly in the interests of justice, but they cannot be ignored. Ignoring a clear statute for the sake of expediency means that we are no longer under a rule of law but the rule of some official or court’s notion of convenience and practicality,” Rea wrote.
Rea didn’t seem convinced that a 2012 session law giving Bennett’s office the authority to hire outside counsel permitted him to circumvent Horne’s office and take the complaint directly to Montgomery. The county attorney said in a written statement he will not appeal because doing so would only delay the case further. Bennett must now send the case to Horne, who will then shuttle it to an outside agency because of his obvious conflict of interest.
