Maricopa County law enforcement violated the constitutional rights of this newspaper’s readers in October. Using secret grand jury subpoenas, County Attorney Andrew Thomas sought records that would reveal the identity of anyone who’d looked at New Times online in the past four years. When the paper’s leaders revealed the grand…

The lawyer behind the arrests of New Times executives Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin is central in a seminal lawsuit alleging that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office violates the constitutional rights of inmates in its charge. Hundreds of inmates involved in a class-action suit against the Sheriff’s Office have waited…

In August 2005, Nathan Thinnes sold his house. It must have been a relief. Coming home from work one evening, just days before the closing, Thinnes heard his dog whimpering in the backyard of his small home near Arcadia. You can see Camelback Mountain from the yard, but Nathan Thinnes…

The conference table in Fred Unger’s office is cheap. The walls are papered with photos and magazine spreads tacked into drywall — there’s none of the mahogany and marble typical of multimillion-dollar developers. Unger has spent the past 10 years obsessing over these thumb-tacked pictures. One shows a table next…

Pinal County Supervisor Sandie Smith stood at her front door, barefoot, and she did not want to talk. She had ignored three phone calls, opportunities to answer claims that she is running restaurateur Dale Bell out of business. “That’s between the county attorney and him,” Smith said. Actually it was…