Megan Cassidy

The Republic | azcentral.com

Drugs were only the beginning of the illicit items stashed the home of now-deceased former Maricopa County Sheriff's Deputy Ramon "Charley" Armendariz, a recently released search warrant reveals.

Officials found license plates from unknown vehicles, "hundreds" of drivers' licenses, ID cards, passports, airport security clearance cards, empty wallets and wallets filled with personal belongings, in addition to various illegal drugs and drug paraphernalia, according to court records.

The items seized were often stored in Maricopa County Sheriff's Office evidence bags, investigators said.

The items indicated that Armendariz was failing to process evidence — and potentially jeopardizing cases — for the last 7 years, according to court records.

Detectives located more incriminating evidence in Armendariz's office, including citations that had been written and torn up, and citations where the court and complaint copies had never been turned in, according to the affidavit.

"A majority of the citations were criminal and they were never prosecuted because the court copies had never been turned in," the detective stated in the document.

Armendariz had been engaged in a series of standoffs with law enforcement in the last week was found dead from an apparent suicide when deputies went to his home to serve an arrest warrant Thursday afternoon, Sheriff Joe Arpaio said Thursday evening.

Armendariz had been a Sheriff's Office deputy since May 31, 2005, and worked in various areas of the office, including the human smuggling unit and a unit dedicated to patrolling the southwest portion of Maricopa County.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio said in a statement that the department is investigating the source and genuineness of the various identity documents discovered during the execution of the search warrant.

"At the present time we have not yet determined whether the seized items were actually part of a departmental report, nor if they were actually seized and placed in evidence," he said.

There is no playbook that explicitly lays out how this new information will affect the criminal cases Armendariz touched in the past several years as a peace officer, according to Gary Stuart, senior policy advisor and adjunct professor of law at Arizona State University's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law.

Cases that hinged on the credibility of Armendariz — those in which he investigated, witnessed, arrested or took a confession — could all be subject to review, he said.

"Credibility is a very important test of admissibility," Stuart said. Those in which Armendariz played a casual role likely would not be affected.

This could apply to cases which a suspect has been tried and convicted, Stuart said, as recently demonstrated in the case of convicted child killer Debra Milke.

Milke's conviction and death row sentence were thrown out last year due to the former Phoenix police detective who reportedly took her confession. Milke's confession was not recorded, and it was later revealed that Armando Saldate had a history of misconduct as a police officer — and that Milke's defense team did not have documentation of those transgressions.

Because of a new Arizona State Bar ethics rule, prosecutors are now obligated to take a more proactive approach to exculpatory evidence with convicted defendants, Stuart said.

The rule states that when a prosecutor knows of new, credible and material evidence that creates a reasonable likelihood that a convicted defendant did not commit an offense, the prosecutor shall disclose this evidence to the court.

Maricopa County Attorney's Office spokesman Jerry Cobb said it was too soon to speculate what the results of the search warrant could mean for Armendariz's previous cases.

"This is a developing situation," he said. "We'll have to see how this all plays out."

The items that police found in the home, including personal identification, and Armandariz's role as a productive member of the sheriff's human-smuggling unit, led some observers to question his motives in hoarding the evidence.

Armandariz's testimony in the sheriff's 2012 federal racial-profiling trial indicated that was among the most active members of the squad in terms of stops and arrests.

Local immigration and employment attorney Julie Pace said the substantial amount of evidence in Armendariz's home, and the sheriff's practices during immigration-enforcement efforts, raise concerns about why the Armendariz had so many forms of ID that belong to others, and whether there is more evidence to be discovered.

"It's alarming that someone on the human smuggling side is engaged in (stolen) documents," she said.