Serving Up Stapley: Why’s the Don Stapley Prosecution a Big Joke? Because the Accusers Are Far Shadier Than the Accused

Charlton, Stapley's lawyer, filed a motion in February to dismiss "Stapley One" because Stapley disclosed his connection with Wolfswinkel in a 2006 conflict-of-interest letter to the supervisors — and because Thomas' office had helped Stapley prepare the letter. Another pending motion accused Thomas of "selective enforcement" and cited the problems with Arpaio's own disclosure forms.

In the first week of April, before the judge could rule on the motions, Thomas transferred the case to the Yavapai County Attorney's Office. He claimed he was offering an "olive branch" to the county.

Don Stapley

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Joe Arpaio and Andrew Thomas kicked off the investigation of Don Stapley on May 14, 2008.

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But the breaking point for Thomas must have been the court decision on March 31 by Judge Gary Donahoe in a related case. Weeks earlier, the supervisors had sued Thomas over the court-tower investigation, arguing that the County Attorney's Office had been consulted on many occasions as the $347 million tower was planned.

Donahoe ruled in the board's favor and kicked Thomas off the case, stating that Thomas' desired role as both lawyer and adversary had the "appearance of evil."

After Thomas moved the court-tower and Stapley cases to Yavapai, the court determined Thomas' alleged bias against Stapley was irrelevant because he was no longer the prosecutor.

But it doesn't seem irrelevant at all.

Thomas' office had launched the investigation with an anonymous tip, after all. The damage was done, in that the initial — and petty — paperwork violations were pursued for prosecutions and had spawned a larger probe that was, perhaps, starting to bear fruit.

Nevertheless, Yavapai assigned the case to a special prosecutor, former Navajo County Attorney Mel Bowers.

Thomas claimed his hands were clean, now that he no longer had even the appearance of a conflict. And Stapley looked like toast; all the paperwork violations appeared clear-cut. But Stapley did not skimp when it came to hiring a defense attorney.

He hired Tom Henze and Charlton, the former U.S. Attorney for Arizona. It wasn’t long before the team discovered a sandy legal foundation under the Stapley prosecution. Henze filed a motion claiming that county supervisors never put into practice a state law forcing counties to require elected officials to complete financial-disclosure forms.

In response to the motion, Judge Fields tossed 51 of the 117 remaining charges against Stapley in August. (One of the 118 already had been dropped.)

With the law now in question, the special prosecutor dropped the remaining charges on Friday, September 18, to focus on launching an appeal of Fields' August decision.

That Monday, Arpaio's deputies followed Stapley from his Mesa home to the county parking garage at Third Avenue and Jefferson Street. When Stapley stepped out of his white Honda Civic, he was arrested.

"I'm sure all the cameras will be there," Stapley told the deputies, according to records. "I know how you guys work."

"I hope not," a deputy replied. He was either lying or naïve.

They handcuffed Stapley, took him to jail, perp-walked him in front of the news media, and accused him of 100 new criminal counts. Most were felonies: fraud, theft, and misusing his public office.

It was a rapid reversal of fortune for Stapley, though the whole MCSO operation was bizarre.

There was no legitimate need to arrest Stapley. The political icon of the East Valley could hardly be expected to run off to Brazil. Even weirder, it turned out that Yavapai County prosecutors had been reviewing the "Stapley Two" charges but hadn't made a decision on whether to pursue the case. They and Maricopa county prosecutors denied prior knowledge that Arpaio would arrest Stapley.

A judge had blocked Thomas from having Stapley booked into jail in the first go-around. With this second push for prosecution, Arpaio and Hendershott took matters into their own hands, with Thomas supposedly out of the loop. No judge had knowledge of what was about to transpire, so no judge could get in the way.

Of course, the arrest mocked the notion of checks and balances in the legal system. The typical course of action, according to experts, would've been for the MCSO to discuss the plan for arrest with both the prosecutor's office and the judge in Stapley's first criminal case.

The supervisor was booked, fingerprinted, and photographed — but no prosecutor picked up the case. After 48 hours, it was dropped from the court system. If a prosecutor's office decides to file charges, Stapley will either be rearrested or served with a court summons.

In fact, he should have been served with a summons in September, says former U.S. Attorney for Arizona Mel McDonald. That's what would happen in "99.99 percent of cases" like Stapley's, McDonald says.

The former federal attorney now in private practice didn't want to speculate on why Arpaio's office was so heavy-handed with Stapley but says he "didn't like" what the sheriff did.

For his part, Hendershott claims there was no "urgency" to arrest Stapley. Rather, he says, his men finished up work on the case on September 11, and it was decided to make the arrest 10 days later.

The timing of the collar — almost immediately after Yavapai County dropped the older charges — makes Hendershott's explanation tough to swallow.

Don Stapley is descended from the Valley's earliest Mormon pioneers; his family is why Mesa has a major street called Stapley Drive. The graduate of Westwood High School and Utah's Brigham Young University has been active in community affairs since he was a teenager.