Pass the popcorn
That's "cases" with an "s," as in
plural, as in
more than one. This week Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio celebrated his 83rd birthday, so we might pause a moment and light an Old Yankee candle that smells like 113-degree Tent City sweat. Then let's reflect on whether he'll still be in office this time next year when number 84 rolls around, when he could be preparing for his 2016 re-election campaign, which he's already
announced.
History reminds us that no matter how much deep doo-doo Arpaio finds himself in, and no matter how many tens of millions of dollars the lawsuits against him cost county residents, he manages to remain in power—even while colleagues accused of the same or lesser crimes are indicted, disbarred, recalled and otherwise removed from office. Virtually no legislator, attorney general, county attorney, deputy sheriff or other official who helped erect the scaffolding for Arpaio's police state remains—no one but him.
As one of the most sued public officials in the nation, Joe Arpaio is used to arguing multiple lawsuits simultaneously. Heck, sometimes it seems he spends his entire day in court or in front of the cameras, neglecting little things like criminals molesting kids. But two federal court cases this summer just might signal the beginning of this tyrant's end, especially given his dismal approval ratings.
First up is the second phase of a contempt of court hearing that was supposed to restart this month. The contempt hearing stems from an earlier case, Melendres v. Arpaio, which in 2013 found Arpaio's office guilty of racial profiling. After that verdict was handed down, presiding Judge Murray Snow ordered Arpaio to turn over evidence, end his immigration patrols and install a court-appointed monitor to oversee progress toward a more just sheriff's office. Arpaio did none of this, thus the contempt of court hearing.
Knowing he was guilty as hell on the contempt charge, Sheriff Arpaio tried to head off the hearing by publicly confessing his guilt, asking forgiveness and offering to donate $100,000 to a civil rights organization (in addition to earning $100,000 a year as county sheriff, Arpaio and his wife are millionaires "a couple of times over"). The sheriff's victims and Judge Snow declined his offer, and the initial four-day phase of the contempt hearing ended last month, and not in a good way for the sheriff.
How bad was it? Well, Arpaio's lead attorney quit on the very first day, and once the proceedings got underway, former deputies turned on the sheriff, alleging that he willfully disobeyed Judge Snow's court orders. News coverage described a subdued and chastened Arpaio, not the blustering blowhard we're used to seeing giving the finger to authorities, and it only got crazier from there, leading to a final-day bombshell: A previous Arpaio attorney (who also quit the case) had hired a private detective to investigate Judge Snow's wife. Yowza!
Head below the fold for more intrigue, corruption, and Arpaio practices.
In order to put off or at least delay the hearing's inevitably terrible second phase, Arpaio and his legal team had to find a way to postpone the June date. So in late May his attorneys filed a motion requesting that Judge Snow be removed from the case. Specifically, they alleged that the judge is biased against the sheriff because, as we learned on the last day of the contempt hearing, his wife had been investigated by the sheriff's attorney.
Three points:
1. It would be difficult to find any Arizona judge who has an unbiased opinion about Sheriff Arpaio, since he has spent his career investigating, harassing and indicting judges and other office holders who don't support his unconstitutional tactics.
2. It's not inconceivable that Sheriff Arpaio orchestrated this whole shebang. The investigation of Judge Snow's wife was prompted by a Facebook post from an Arpaio supporter who said she overheard Mrs. Snow say she and the judge don't like the sheriff. So of course Arpaio latched onto this tip because it fits his paranoid, conspiratorial worldview. In the end, the investigation went nowhere, but the Facebook story gave Arpaio cause to act, then claim that Judge Snow could not be impartial once he learned his wife had been an investigative target.
3. Maybe the judge is a little prejudiced. Isn't that implied in a contempt charge? I told you to do X, you didn't, so appear before me and 'splain yourself.
Even so, Arpaio can bellyache all he wants about Judge Snow, a George W. Bush appointee to the federal bench, but all of the judge's findings in this case have been upheld on appeal; and while Judge Snow might not like the sheriff's methods, he's been a model of impartiality. He even agreed to take into consideration Arpaio's motion that the judge recuse himself, and he postponed the second half of the contempt hearing until later this summer—from the scheduled June date until probably August.
When something else will happen.
We learned last week that a Department of Justice investigation into Sheriff Arpaio's dirty tricks will come to fruition in August, when another trial gets underway:
On Thursday, [Judge Roslyn] Silver ordered a bench trial in U.S. v. Maricopa County to begin August 10, estimating that the trial will last 15 days.
Arpaio tried to stonewall or otherwise muddle this trial as well, but
this week Judge Silver said, sorry, it's going ahead as planned. The years-long DOJ investigation examined some of the same crimes central to
Melendres v. Arpaio, specifically racial profiling. However, writes
Stephen Lemons, "the DOJ complaint is much broader than in
Melendres, and covers Arpaio's abuses of power, his retaliation against his critics, and ongoing discrimination against Spanish-speakers in county jails."
It's quite a long list of illegal shenanigans, including murdering inmates awaiting trial, unlawfully indicting elected officials, and arresting journalists who wrote nasty things about the sheriff. Those three linked-to episodes alone cost citizens about $8 million in settlements. And that's only the beginning, says Lemons:
As detailed in the DOJ lawsuit, the MCSO's [Maricopa County Sheriff's Office's] unconstitutional activities run the gamut from the targeting of Latinos, to the violation of the rights of Spanish-speakers, to the illegal arrests of New Times' founders in 2007, to the wrongful arrests of Arpaio critics at a county Board of Supervisors' meeting in 2008 for "clapping," to the illegal targeting and arrest of Phoenix civil rights activist Salvador Reza [YouTube video], to false charges brought by the MCSO against ex-Superior Court Judge Gary Donahoe, to the MCSO's retaliation against former supervisors Mary Rose Wilcox and Don Stapley, and so on.
While
Melendres dealt with the civil rights violations of two Mexican men who were in the country legally, and related cases of detainment, the DOJ lawsuit covers more of Arpaio's twenty-plus years of retaliation, harassment and revenge. Judge Silver, who is presiding over the DOJ trial, can probably expect the sheriff and his legal goons to discredit her in some fashion, just like he has
other judges:
A former top Maricopa County judge who says his career was wrecked by Sheriff Joe Arpaio is speaking out for the first time after seeing the sheriff take on the federal judge overseeing his racial-profiling case... [R]etired judge Gary Donohoe labeled Arpaio a "domestic enemy" for his record of attacking judges and elected officials.
In fact, one of the reasons Sheriff Arpaio wants Judge Murray Snow to recuse himself from the contempt hearing is because, according to the sheriff's paid informants, the judge is part of the so-called
"Seattle Operation," a plot that also includes former AG Eric Holder and former Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon. This bogus conspiracy theory, which Arpaio spent taxpayers' money investigating, holds that the Feds and the City of Phoenix spied on Arpaio in order to find dirt that could bring him down. Judge Snow
was having none of it.
When Stephen Lemons at New Times first reported on this cockamamie scheme, as well as the sheriff's investigation of the judge's wife, the Seattle informant's lawyer and Arpaio BFF Larry Klayman (yes, the WorldNetDaily wackjob), called Lemons a "sleazy reporter" who writes for an "ultraleftist and pro-immigration" paper. Sure, Larry, I guess you'd call the New York Times a commie rag too, because it says the contempt hearing revealed that "the investigations described in Mr. Lemons’s reporting were real."
It'll take some creative chutzpah to come up with something equally nutbally with which to smear Judge Silver, but give Arpaio and his flunkies time and resources. They'll likely introduce more roadblocks to obstruct and stall for time, a typical Arpaio ploy. As for resources, they already have a well-oiled, multi-million-dollar national fundraising campaign underway, and it's working. Gullible patriots bigots are sending cash by the bucketfuls:
Dear Patriot,
I'm going to cut right to the chase because I really need your help... You see, in the daily exercise of doing my job I am often targeted by groups that file legal actions against me for a variety of reasons.
Yeah, "a variety of reasons," starting with: You're a criminal.