Also, Sheriff Joe Arpaio has a team of detectives in his Selective Enforcement Unit whose primary task has been to investigate anyone perceived to have threatened Arpaio. It made sense that the unit would be ready, willing, and able to look into death threats against a judge.
In May 2002, the New York Times quoted the sheriff about a foiled plot to kill him and then-Arizona governor Jane Dee Hull:
Presiding County Judge Barbara Mundell has battled Andrew Thomas since 2005.
Judge Ed Burke rejected efforts by Thomas to get a senior judge booted off all criminal cases.
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"It only takes one time to die," Arpaio said.
But that was Arpaio carrying on about his favorite subject — himself — not about threats against a judge who had gotten crossways with Arpaio's ideological blood brother, County Attorney Andrew Thomas.
What happened next in the Ryan case speaks volumes about the dangerously dysfunctional relationship between the 95-member local judiciary and the county's two most powerful elected law enforcement officials.
According to an incident report filed by sheriff's deputy R.W. Carney, he and another deputy met Judge Ryan at the courthouse about 10:30 on the morning that Ryan had reported the published threats.
Carney wrote in his half-page report, "Judge Ryan gave me a copy of the article that appeared in the Arizona Republic, and a copy of the blog posted by the online name of [redacted], which is attached to this report."
Carney said he would forward a copy of his report to the MCSO's special-investigations unit "for follow-up."
Judge Ryan tells New Times he also spoke with a sheriff's detective, who asked him to provide a copy of the Web site comment that likened killing judges to the infamous murder of Don Bolles.
Ryan, who says he has had a trusting relationship with the courthouse-based sheriff's deputies since becoming a judge in 2005, did as instructed, adding that it took MCSO detectives a few days to collect the document.
That was the last he heard from the Sheriff's Office on the matter.
Weeks later, the judge contacted the U.S. Department of Justice about the Web comments. He says he has been told the FBI is looking into the case.
The distinction is stark between the Sheriff's Office's lackadaisical probe into the threats against Ryan and the no-stone-unturned approach that the MCSO takes in investigating anyone who may mean harm to Sheriff Arpaio.
Earlier this year, the Republic reported that the financially strapped Sheriff's Office had spent more than $500,000 investigating a dubious plot to kill Arpaio. One of several alleged threats against the sheriff's life over the years, this one was based on "information" from a paid source.
According to the informant, the plot was hatched by the anti-immigration Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, which supposedly was in cahoots with a local Latino activist and talk-show host to have the sheriff assassinated. The group allegedly was going to pay members of a Mexican drug cartel $3 million to murder Arpaio, with the motive of spurring average citizens to rise up in outrage against illegal immigrants.
The informant's cockamamie story never panned out, though Arpaio continues to claim publicly that the investigation remains open.
"If judges are doing their jobs, on occasion they will make other branches [of government] really angry," U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy once said.
He could well have been talking about Maricopa County.
Andrew Thomas has been really angry with the local judiciary since the day he assumed office in January 2005.
As for Joe Arpaio, well, he is just angry, period, with anyone who does not agree with his view of the world. Those on his hit list have included certain media, former County Attorney Rick Romley, who wouldn't go along with some of the sheriff's publicity-driven stunts; and people charged (forget convicted) with crimes. More recently, Arpaio added illegal immigrants and local police chiefs, the immigrants because they're a handy hot-button topic and the chiefs because they generally don't subscribe to his blitzkrieg approach to tackling the issue.
Thomas especially has been determined to intimidate county criminal judges into doing his bidding — letting them know that, if they don't, they will face the consequences.
The consequences have included a series of complaints against one highly respected judge with the Arizona Commission on Judicial Conduct, and public dressing-downs of judges, as when Thomas commissioned private attorney Dennis Wilenchik to try to impress upon Judge Ryan and the bench what might happen if they rule in ways that displease the county attorney.
Thomas' message to the judges is, we are in charge here and you, ladies and gentlemen, are figureheads who will do our bidding; otherwise, my office will make your lives miserable.
As for Arpaio, many at the courthouse are convinced that an extraordinary November 5 shutdown of criminal proceedings — allegedly because of a budget crunch and "misunderstandings" that kept deputies from getting inmates to their hearings — was designed to let the judges know who's really in charge.
The tag team of Thomas and Arpaio has the great advantage of the bully pulpit. The county attorney and sheriff have a stage from which they can spew tough-guy rhetoric about the need to corral the rampaging hordes of criminals from south of the border, and about weak-kneed judges who supposedly pamper the brown-skinned bandidos in court.
