In a letter to New Times from a state prison facility in Yuma, Patrick Ivey wrote recently that "the prosecutor had the decision to drop the dangerousness of the crime so I might have had a chance to be placed on probation, maybe after doing some more jail time. Judge Granville tried to reason with her to do so. She refused, citing her inhibitions due to her supervisor. I feel that is a lie, and she intended to give me as much time as she could."
On Ivey's original sentencing date of July 2, the judge said during a bench conference that his proposed 603-L findings in the case would involve race, and advised Linn she could try to convince him otherwise.
Warren Granville
Patrick Nolan Ivey (above) was the only one nailed in a home-invasion robbery.
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"I was just trying to give her an idea of what I was inclined to do, to give her a chance to take it up the chain or to play chicken and not back down. I'll often tell lawyers, 'These are what my facts are. Tell me why my facts are wrong.'"
But Linn didn't respond to Granville in writing until after the judge actually sentenced Ivey on August 22. At that hearing, the judge announced that he believed "the sentence required by law is clearly excessive and [Ivey] may petition the Board of Executive Clemency for a commutation of sentence within 90 days after [he] is committed to [prison]."
In her belated pleading to Granville, the prosecutor referred to Ivey's confession, to his alleged juvenile criminal history, and to other matters, including the defendant's supposed lack of remorse.
Granville says he considered Linn's memorandum much as he treats letters in support of a defendant.
"If you think a judge is wrong on the law or on the facts of a case, write a memo on the law or the facts and submit it as quickly as possible," he says. "She put things in her pleading that I couldn't consider at sentencing, such as the confession, because I had precluded it. Her presentation was too little and too late."
Judge Granville informed his two supervisors, Jim Keppel and Barbara Mundell, presiding judge over all of the county courts, when he learned that the County Attorney's Office had filed its judicial complaint against him.
He says he asked the pair if they wanted to transfer him to another assignment, perhaps civil or juvenile or family law. They told him to stay put.
"I know Warren well and have the ultimate respect for him as a fair, impartial and professional judge," says Keppel, the county's chief criminal judge. "I just don't know of anything that Warren did in this particular case that merited anything close to how the County Attorney's Office reacted."
Though the judicial complaint by Thomas' chief assistant, Wells, was tantamount to a declaration of war against the judge, it didn't turn out to mean anything on a day-to-day level.
In September, the month after Wells filed her complaint against Warren Granville, prosecutors exercised their right to have county judges in 32 criminal cases removed for various reasons. That month, defense attorneys removed judges in 22 cases.
But no one on either side of the legal fence asked for Judge Granville's removal in any of the 406 cases he had pending in his court.
The 19 death-penalty cases currently before Granville are nine more than the next-closest judge.
"If they think I'm so unfair and biased over there at the County Attorney's Office, then why have they continued to appear in my courtroom?" the judge asks. "I must be doing something right, because lawyers on both sides keep on showing up in my court."
Special Assistant County Attorney Lotstein, who used to be Granville's supervisor when the two men worked at the Arizona Attorney General's Office, explains that away by saying that "we never have suggested that Warren is a bad judge or a bad guy, just that he made a terribly offensive ruling in this case by calling us racists. Maybe he woke up on the wrong side of the bed that day. All I know is that he deeply upset a young prosecutor who doesn't have a racist bone in her body."
That prosecutor, Linn, returned to Granville's court just a few weeks after Ivey's sentencing to try another armed robbery and kidnapping case.
A jury acquitted each of the defendants she was prosecuting.
Last week, Granville received a letter from the judicial commission about the results of the County Attorney Office's complaint against him.
The commission cleared him of any judicial misconduct.
But the panel also chided Granville for his "sweeping statements" about the County Attorney's Office and said it was "concerned about the quantum of evidence" to support his accusations of racism.
In the future, the commission said, the judge should avoid making such "inflammatory" statements.
"I love being a judge, and I think I'm a fair guy," Granville says. "But when you sign up as a judge, you have to act like a judge. I call it like I see it, and I plan to continue to do just that."
