Massa, J.
Wesley Ryder, an off-duty police trainee, caused a head-on collision when he drove the wrong way on an Indianapolis freeway. Ryder—who has been charged with various felonies and misdemeanors for operating while intoxicated—now seeks the suppression of blood test results obtained the morning of the accident. He argues that both an Indiana statute and his constitutional rights were violated when the arresting state trooper failed to properly file a probable cause affidavit to obtain a blood-draw search warrant. The trial court agreed and suppressed the blood test results, finding that a copy of the probable cause affidavit was not properly filed until a few hours after it had been presented to the warrant-authorizing judge and quickly executed.
Today, we reverse the suppression of the blood test and remand for two reasons. First, we hold that the warrant-authorizing judge certified contemporaneously, and in writing, that the probable cause affidavit had been properly filed with her when the search warrant was issued. Second, we hold that even if the affidavit was filed a few hours after it was presented to the authorizing judge—as the trial court found—it was still valid under Indiana’s substantial compliance filing doctrine and suppression of evidence obtained from the search warrant is not justified.
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When written affidavits are used, the General Assembly has long required that a copy of the affidavit be filed with the issuing court. See, e.g., Ind. Code Ann. § 35-1-6-2 (1914) (requiring the filing of an affidavit). Here, we must determine whether Indiana Code subsection 35-33-5-2(a)’s requirement that a warrant shall not issue until an affidavit “is filed with the judge” was met—either actually or substantially—when Trooper Augst undisputedly presented Judge Crawford with a written affidavit in the early morning of June 4th. See Ind. Code § 35-33-5-2 (“Except as provided in section 8 of this chapter [allowing the use of other forms of recorded testimony], and subject to the requirements of section 11 of this chapter, if applicable, no warrant for search or arrest shall be issued until there is filed with the judge an affidavit. . .”) (emphasis added).
I. The filing requirement was actually met.
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Today we reaffirm that providing a copy of an affidavit to the warrant-issuing judge satisfies the plain language of Indiana Code subsection 35- 33-5-2(a). While the ease of document submission under our electronic filing system should provide a means to eliminate many filing problems— like the one at issue here—we recognize that the time-sensitive nature of many warrant requests means that situations may still arise where warrant applications are presented to a judge before they are filed with the clerk’s office. By allowing the filing requirement to be met by simply providing an extra copy of the affidavit to the issuing judge at the time the warrant is signed, the General Assembly has created a manageable requirement.
This reading also tracks Indiana Code section 35-33-5-8, which allows verbal, faxed, or even emailed forms of sworn testimony to serve as the basis for a warrant if the issuing judicial officer maintains a record. See Ind. Code § 35-33-5-8(a). We believe the General Assembly did not intend to disadvantage the in-person presentation of written affidavits over less secure methods of delivery. See, e.g., Ind. Code § 35-33-5-8(f) (“If a warrant is issued under subsection (a)(3), the facsimile copy of the affidavit and warrant sent to the judge shall be retained as if they were the originals.”). Although best practice counsels formally filing an affidavit with the court clerk before presenting it to a judicial officer for consideration, providing a copy of the document for a judicial officer to retain alone satisfies the filing requirement. [Footnote omitted.]
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II. The filing requirement was substantially met.
Even if we agreed that the paper was not “filed” until Trooper Augst dropped his copy of the paperwork at the clerk’s office after the blood draw, we hold that this filing would still substantially comply with the statutory requirement.
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The primary objective of Indiana’s statutory filing requirement is to ensure the defendant is provided prompt access to a complete and accurate record of sworn testimony considered by the judicial officer who issued the warrant. See Cutter, 646 N.E.2d at 712. This access ensures that both the State and the judicial officers can promptly be held accountable when warrants are issued based on questionable legal or factual bases. See, e.g., Heuring v. State, 140 N.E.3d 270, 272 (Ind. 2020) (suppressing evidence because “affidavits did not establish probable cause that the GPS device was stolen”). By requiring contemporaneous filing, the statute also seeks to ensure accuracy by limiting opportunities for later tampering with the documents’ contents.
Under the substantial compliance doctrine, the length of delay in filing is of paramount concern. See Johnson v. State, 952 N.E.2d 305, 309 (Ind. Ct. App. 2011) (“[I]t is significant whether the filing of an affidavit is timely.”). When a warrant application is filed weeks after its execution (or is never filed) these apprehensions soar to their zenith. See Rucker, 861 N.E.2d at 1242 (suppressing evidence after warrant and affidavit were filed fifteen days after execution); Mason, 829 N.E.2d at 1021 (suggesting a twenty-eight-day late filing was grounds for suppression); Johnson, 952 N.E.2d at 309 (finding that suppression of evidence would be appropriate because the affidavit was never actually filed, however, the state was saved by the good faith exception). By contrast, these concerns plummet to their nadir when the warrant application is filed soon after its issuance. See Bowles, 820 N.E.2d at 746 (finding substantial compliance when, even absent an explanation for the delay, the affidavit was filed with the clerk the next day).
Given that the trial court found that the warrant was filed (at the most) four hours late, the facts of the present case are simply much closer to Bowles than they are to Rucker or Johnson. Ryder had access to the contents of the warrant application and was free to challenge the warrant based on the affidavit’s contents. [Footnote omitted.] Ryder does not contend that he was prejudiced by the trooper’s failure to file the affidavit precisely according to the statute. While the lack of prejudice is not by itself dispositive, see Rucker, 861 N.E.2d at 1242, it certainly strengthens the State’s position. And since a copy kept in the Hospital’s records was saved at the time of its execution—less than an hour after it was signed by Judge Crawford—the State was not provided with a significant theoretical opportunity to tamper with the affidavit. In short, we find substantial compliance, even if the affidavit was “filed” four hours late, because the main goals of the filing requirement were met.
Not every warrant application filed up to a day late is inevitably in substantial compliance with the filing requirement. As cautioned in Bowles, situations where other factors—including a repeated disregard of the filing deadlines by the State—may justify the suppression of warrants when warrant applications are filed mere hours late. 820 N.E.2d at 746 n.5 (“Although we have determined that [the Detective] substantially complied with the statute in this case, we can envision other circumstances that could arise which would lead to the opposite result.”). The record here, however, shows no signs of systemic abuse of the filing process or other troubling factors. As Ryder notes, this was the first time Trooper Augst was forced to meet a judge at a gas station to seek the authorization of a search warrant. Therefore, the substantial compliance doctrine also requires that the results of this warrant should not be dismissed.
Conclusion
We hold that the blood-draw search warrant application satisfied the filing requirement under Indiana Code subsection 35-33-5-2(a) because the signing judge’s uncontroverted certification that an affidavit had been delivered to her at the time of the warrant’s authorization established that the filing requirement had been satisfied. Alternatively, even if the warrant application was “filed” four hours late, the tardy submission still constitutes substantial compliance with the filing requirement. We reverse and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Rush, C.J., and David and Goff, JJ., concur. Slaughter, J., concurs in Part I and in the judgment, without separate opinion.