Talk about a metaphor. Sheriff Joe Arpaio was limping toward me on his way out of federal Judge G. Murray Snow’s courtroom in downtown Phoenix, following a recent hearing before the jurist. Snow, the trial judge in the landmark civil-rights case Melendres v. Arpaio, had signaled, for what seemed like…
Despite the threat of a lawsuit and allegations that its investigators tried to frame an innocent man, the Arizona Department of Public Safety continues to try to link Phoenix landscaper Leslie Merritt Jr. to four shootings in 2015 on the I-10 freeway. Court documents recently unsealed by superior court Judge…
The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office fought for several years to put accused murderer Craig Michael Devine on death row, but on Wednesday, the county gave up on executing him. Devine, 39, is one of two men who were charged with murder in a gruesome 2010 double homicide in a Tempe…
Perhaps the only thing that can halt Pinal County’s ethically challenged sheriff, Paul Babeu, from winning the Republican primary for Arizona’s First Congressional District is a concentrated campaign of political carpet bombing. By carpet bombing, I mean a deluge of robocalls, mailers, and/or TV ads aimed at bringing voters up…
When it comes to orchestrating a civil rights-themed public spectacle in Phoenix, the Reverend Jarrett Maupin cannot be beat. Billed as a protest of police brutality, the event that took place Friday at 24th Street and Camelback Road in the city’s tony Biltmore area lacked the spontaneity, the fear and…
Andy Barrios, the driver in a 2015 Christmas-night car crash that killed three men, including popular Phoenix rapper Jose “Low Key” Hernandez, failed to make a July 1 initial appearance in Phoenix municipal court for the low-level misdemeanor he faces stemming from the fatal collision. As a result, the court…
Two of Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu’s siblings believe their brother is unfit to be a U.S. Congressman and have endorsed one of his rivals for the GOP primary in Arizona’s First Congressional District, which will be decided August 30. In separate statements released recently by Republican hopeful Wendy Rogers, Lucy…
State Senator Andy Biggs, then-chair of the powerful Appropriations Committee, rolled out his radical proposal during a late-night, marathon hearing in February 2011, where a number of controversial bills were being rubber-stamped by the Republican-dominated body. The erudite ultra-conservative wasn’t coy in laying out his revolutionary blueprint, a complete elimination of Arizona’s Medicaid program, known by its…
Ex-Minuteman and anti-immigrant vigilante Chris Simcox declined to speak on his own behalf during his sentencing today in a Phoenix courtroom. “I have nothing to say, Your Honor,” the former kindergarten teacher said, as he stood before Judge Jose Padilla. He was dressed in stripes with his wrists handcuffed in…
Whether online or in person, an angry mob bent on vengeance is not easily placated. Particularly when dead pets are involved. So it goes for some in the Twitterverse, who erupted in rage at Thursday’s news that Gilbert resident Todd Hughes and his mother, MaLeisa Hughes, had copped a plea…
How much does it cost to stage an Islam-bashing festival for law enforcement, tick off the local Muslim community, and engender widespread condemnation from the press, the general public, and civil rights groups like the ACLU and the ADL? About the price of a brand-spankin’-new BMW 328i. Which is to…
A Phoenix driver who allegedly killed three men, including popular local rapper José “Low Key” Hernandez, in an auto crash last year, may wind up serving no more than a month in jail if he’s convicted, despite having admitted to drinking the night of the accident and to running a…
According to one local Republican official, it’s time for the Donald Trump camp to dole out some mob-style justice. This past Saturday, during a radio show broadcast from the Old Pueblo, Bruce Ash, a Tucson businessman who is one of Arizona’s two elected Republican National Committeemen, suggested that three political…
First they try to frame you, then they don’t want to give your property back. So it goes in the Kafkaesque saga of Leslie Merritt Jr., the guy the Arizona Department of Public Safety tried to paint as “the I-10 shooter” after he was arrested last September 18 for four…
Visit sunny Arizona, stay for seven to ten, behind bars. That could be the Arizona Chamber of Commerce’s new slogan for the state, based on a recent analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, which shows that from 2006 to 2014, Arizona’s incarceration…
In the wake of a gunman’s attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, that left 50 dead, including the shooter, and 53 injured, condemnations of the killer, Omar Mateen, who in a 911 call to authorities reportedly swore allegiance to the terrorist group ISIS, have poured in from across…
Wacko Tempe wacko preacher Steven Anderson never misses an opportunity to spew hate and homophobia, so it’s hardly a surprise that he’s capitalizing on the recent massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, where a gunman killed 50 and wounded 53 more early Sunday morning in the worst act of…
U.S. Representative Paul Gosar, Tea Party Republican and professional tooth puller, is using the largesse of big government to assure his constituents that he’s, um, fighting big government. Granted, it’s a hard trick to pull off, but ol’ Doc Gosar is nothing if not baldfaced about it. He has been…
Ex-border vigilante Chris Simcox’s name now can be added to the list of infamous criminals to emerge from the Minuteman movement. On Wednesday, after deliberating for a day and a half, a Phoenix jury found the onetime anti-immigrant firebrand guilty on two counts of child molestation and one count of…
Monday morning, during the last day of ex-border vigilante Chris Simcox’s trial in Phoenix on six felony counts related to child molestation and exposing minors to porn, a video of one of his alleged victims dealt serious damage to Simcox’s cause when the prosecution played it in court. Simcox, who…
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich today announced the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Secretary of State Michele Reagan’s failure to send out hundreds of thousands of “publicity pamphlets” to voters regarding a recent statewide special election as required by law. In a letter to Reagan dated June 2,…
Taking the stand Thursday, during day 12 of his trial in Phoenix for child molestation, former Minuteman and onetime Fox News regular Chris Simcox attempted to undermine the credibility of his accusers, calling one child “extremely precocious” with a penchant for foul language, and another, his grown daughter Linsey Randich,…
