Remember Gary Donahoe, the Superior Court judge accused late last year of "bribery" by County Attorney Andrew Thomas and Sheriff Joe Arpaio?
Though that skanky dog of a case was dropped before it really ever got going (we never will forget this press conference), the boys succeeded in sullying Donahoe's previously impeccable reputation -- which may have been the point all along.
After all (gasp!), the judge ruled against Thomas in several cases, and had the audacity to jail one of Joe's detention officers who had rifled through attorney-client files in open court.
The aborted "bribery" case involved unspecified alleged wrongdoing by Donahoe involving the controversial Court Tower, now under construction in downtown Phoenix.
My colleague Sarah Fenske sorted out the whole thing in a cover story a few months back.
There was something symbolic a few hours ago, when Donahoe and a slew of other judges and court personnel walked in the noonday sun over to a construction-materials area just southeast of the rapidly rising Tower.
They went to write their names on what will be the last girder put into place at the new structure, which supposedly is going up ahead of schedule and below budget (we'll see).
Most of the signers simply scribbled their names and the date.
But Judge Donahoe wrote this:
INJUSTICE ANYWHERE IS A THREAT TO JUSTICE EVERYWHERE.
The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. wrote those words 47 years ago this Friday, in a letter from a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama.
