One of Arizona’s most reviled killers apparently is going to have to wait much longer to get his wish — to die by lethal injection. On December 16, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals tabled its discussion of whether Robert Comer is mentally competent to become a so-called death…
In June 1993, an attorney for the discipline unit of the Vermont State Bar sent a letter to her counterpart in Arizona. It alerted the local Bar that disbarred lawyer Gary Karpin was moving to Phoenix. “Suffice it to say,” the letter said, “out of excess of caution, I forward…
Brian Callan marched into Bell Road Toyota shortly before noon on September 1 toting a 12-gauge shotgun. Unhappy over a lease deal he’d signed the day before, Callan pointed his weapon at sales manager Nathan Smith, and told him to hang up the phone or he’d shoot. He ordered Smith…
To hear this clean-cut, seemingly earnest ex-major league baseball player tell it, it doesn¹t get much better than a methamphetamine high. “I ain’t gonna bullshit you, man, it’s an awesome drug,” says Glendale native Kevin Wickander, who pitched on and off in the big leagues from 1989 to 1996. “Meth…
On August 26, longtime mental-health advocate Jack Harvey stepped into familiar haunts to deliver some God-awful news. “I just had to let people at the office know that I’m not doing so well, that I’m pretty sick at the moment,” says Harvey. The “office” houses the Mental Health Advocates Coalition…
Three-year-old Xzavion Gonzales looks up at his mother in a preoperative room at Phoenix Children’s Hospital. “Am I gonna die, mama?” Xzavion asks Samantha Blier, moments before a doctor gives him a shot to make him sleepy. Blier is taken aback. No, you’re not going to die, she says, you’re…
Felony prosecutor Juan Martinez is despised by many defense attorneys, mainly because he relentlessly plays hardball on the job. He rarely plea bargains, seemingly is always in trial, prepares his cases meticulously, and usually wins. No matter what Martinez’s adversaries may think of him personally or professionally, though, no one…
Severe budget cuts have gutted the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency, and its executive director says he’s “deeply concerned” that the agency no longer will be able to do its job adequately. “It’s like a graveyard in here,” Duane Belcher says, gesturing to empty cubicles and vacated offices. “Doing what…
Franklin Brown, whose controversial account of being ambushed and shot on Lower Buckeye Road in July 2000 once won him honors as one of America’s “Top Cops,” is no longer with the Phoenix Police Department. Phoenix Police Sergeant Randy Force confirms that the department considers Brown to have resigned because…
Death-row inmate Robert Comer says he’s “regained control” of his life, an ironic choice of words in light of a judge’s decision last week to allow his execution to proceed. U.S. District Court Judge Roslyn Silver’s ruling came almost three months after she heard testimony concerning Comer’s current mental state…
Chuck Kniffin steps out of the Arizona Diamondbacks dugout into the late-morning sunshine. The team’s new pitching coach is accompanied by Randy Johnson, one of baseball’s most towering figures, physically and by way of achievement. It’s mid-May, early in the season, and Johnson wants to tweak his pitching windup, to…
Buddy Strong sauntered through the throng during an intermission at the Cricket Pavilion last Sunday night, looking for friends and family there to celebrate his homecoming. The 21-year-old Phoenix native was about to take the stage as the keyboard player for Usher Raymond, one of pop R&B’s biggest young stars…
Longtime Tempe resident Babak Dehghanpisheh knew long before he graduated from college in 1993 that he needed to see the world before he sorted out his career path. So he went to work on a boat in Alaska, “slinging the crab,” for months. The experience only aroused Dehghanpisheh’s wanderlust. Eight…
It’s been three weeks since the artist currently known as Prince helped to christen the Dodge Theatre with a show that left the sellout crowd, well, enraptured. The three-hour performance by Prince and his band — which included inimitable alto saxophonist Maceo Parker of peak James Brown fame — was…
Until a few weeks ago, it seemed certain that beloved Maricopa County Jail psychiatrist Leonardo Garcia-Bunuel had lost his job of 28 years. Garcia-Bunuel had been informed of his firing March 5, in a terse letter approved by then-director of Correctional Health Services Joseph P. Murray. “The intent of this…
Soon after Robert “Gypsy” Comer awakes each morning, he starts walking. Comer knows that 300 laps around his cell makes one mile, and he keeps track of how far he’s gone. He walks for hours on end, doing his time with a kind of Zen focus, trying not to indulge…
Police officers throughout the country have been caught — and some even prosecuted — for falsifying reports of being shot on duty. In Brockton, Massachusetts, a police officer claimed last March that a man had shot at him after a routine stop. The bullet pierced the officer’s jacket, but didn’t…
Phoenix police officer Franklin Brown Jr. has returned to the scene of the crime.”Right here is where it started,” he says, standing on an isolated two-lane road at the city’s southwest tip, on Lower Buckeye Road between 91st and 99th avenues. “This is where I got shot.” Speaking in the…
Maricopa County bureaucrats again are dogging the handful of folks who make a living by selling wieners around the downtown Phoenix courthouse. Ed “The Hot Dogger” Haramina and his food-cart competitors recently learned that the county has canceled the vendors’ two-year contracts at the four sites, even though more than…
Fresh from the Winter Olympics, Dr. Bob Harmison has resumed teaching at Phoenix’s Argosy University, where he is a professor of sports psychology. But he’s still stoked, to borrow a word Harmison heard a thousand times in Salt Lake City during his two-week stint. Harmison served as a mental-training counselor…
Let this be stated for the record: Ulises Ferragut Jr.’s mother loves him. Marie Brito says she knew her older of two children was special, even when she and her then-husband, Ulises Sr., were raising him in their native Cuba. She says her son had a rare combination of great…
For six weeks in the summer of 1999, national media congregated at the Maricopa County courthouse to observe the Scott Falater “Sleepwalking Murder” trial. The Phoenix case attracted such attention because of its peculiar facts and even more peculiar defense (“Wake-Up Call,” Paul Rubin, July 1, 1999). That June, local…
