Power Play

"Under the State's theory, Mr. Bearup's act of cutting off [the victim's] ring finger, while cruel and heinous, was not a cause of the death," Granville wrote.

Granville told the Arizona Supreme Court that he believed Bearup correctly was convicted of murder, even if he hadn't pulled the trigger. But he concluded that the death sentence ordered by the jury wasn't justified because of the deals tendered to, and taken by, two of the other three defendants.

Granville noted, "It is the County Attorney's motto that 'Let justice be done.' This, of course, coincides with a prosecutor's unique ethical responsibility. This Court finds that justice was not done for Mr. Bearup."

Again, the judge was referring to the death sentence, not the conviction. The fourth defendant in the case, the alleged shooter, still is awaiting trial.

Granville declined to confirm whether the County Attorney's Office has filed another judicial complaint against him.

But his colleagues at the courthouse claim Granville is facing new charges filed by Andrew Thomas' aides with the Judicial Commission, which, by law, keeps complaints secret until decisions are rendered.

Two days after Dennis Wilenchik told Judge Ryan to his face that he was a threat to public safety, Thomas held a press conference and angrily blasted Judge Granville for dismissing child-abuse charges against a Phoenix woman, allegedly so that they could never be re-filed.

The reason for the dismissal was that court personnel couldn't find an interpreter who spoke the defendant's native language, a rare African dialect.

But there's just no way the conservative Granville would toss out a case for keeps on that basis. The court file suggests that neither the prosecutor nor the defense attorney considered it more than a temporary dismissal. Once a translator was found, the charge could be re-filed.

In part because of the timing of Thomas' press conference, which came on the heels of Wilenchik's performance in Judge Ryan's courtroom, insiders who heard about the latest attack on Granville were convinced that the County Attorney was grabbing at anything — whether accurate or not — to condemn the judge.

But most of the media dutifully reported as fact what Thomas called the latest judicial outrage. Michael Kiefer, who covers the courts for the Republic, dug deeper and learned that Thomas' accusation had been based on a typographical mistake: The dismissal was temporary after all. (Why the case prosecutor didn't explain all this to someone at his office is uncertain.)

Kiefer explained the simple error to Thomas, but the county attorney wouldn't budge.

"I am pleased that Judge Granville reversed his decision based on my press conference," Thomas was quoted as saying in a news story.

Though his attempt at playing the public was transparent, the County Attorney was technically correct: The judge had said he would correct the clerical error.

It should have come as little surprise that Andrew Peyton Thomas unofficially declared war on the local judiciary soon after he took office in 2005.

Thomas has written extensively over the years about his vision of criminal justice.

A Harvard Law School graduate, Thomas soon adopted the persona of a vigilant, if colorless, soldier against bad guys, ever willing to do battle against criminals and the people he claims coddle them.

At the top of that list of coddlers are judges and defense attorneys.

About a decade ago, the future county attorney wrote in the conservative Weekly Standard about prosecutors who are "relatively young and inexperienced and of average ability." These simpletons are often overwhelmed, he claimed, by crafty defense attorneys.

Andrew Thomas is a bona fide inciter, not an insider.

His idea of communication with those from other facets of the criminal justice system — particularly judges — hasn't been to get on the phone and hash things out like most people in his position might do.

It's been to hire Dennis Wilenchik, long known to county judges as an attorney more than willing to viciously attack anyone who stands in his way in a legal proceeding.

Should anybody have been shocked by Thomas' choice of lawyers to represent him in his clash with the courts?

In December 1996, while working as an assistant Arizona attorney general, Thomas wrote, "The [U.S. Supreme] Court has grown incapable of overturning any of the landmark criminals' rights rulings, either from an overriding zeal for judicial power or from a broad-based judicial ideology that has grown comfortable with these rights and the social advances they supposedly represent."

He was referring not to the liberal Warren court that ushered in the Miranda warning and a host of other rulings favoring the rights of criminal defendants, but to its far more conservative successor, the Rehnquist court.

Thomas and his political ilk seem obsessed with the belief that judges cannot be trusted, period.

Rachel Alexander, one of his "special assistants" at the County Attorney's Office and cofounder of a Web site called intellectualconservative.com, has published many pieces concerning the state of the judiciary, none flattering.

Last year, right-wing Republican activist Carol Turoff wrote, "Once selected and robed, the system that put(s) [judges] on the bench takes on a glow that belies the stark political realities behind the scenes."