Thread: Ex-Sheriff Joe Arpaio to defend reputation at criminal trial

By JACQUES BILLEAUD, ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOENIX — Jun 26, 2017, 7:36 PM ET


Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, second from right, leaves U.S. District Court on the first day of contempt-of-court trial with attorney Mark Goldman, left, Monday...

Former Sheriff Joe Arpaio's criminal trial opened Monday over his defiance of the courts in traffic patrols that targeted immigrants, marking the most aggressive effort to hold the former lawman of metro Phoenix accountable for tactics that critics say racially profiled Latinos.

In opening arguments, prosecutors displayed comments Arpaio made in news releases and during TV interviews in which he bragged about immigration enforcement, aiming to prove that he should be found guilty of misdemeanor contempt of court.

"He thought he could get away with it," prosecutor Victor Salgado said, adding that at least 170 were illegally detained because Arpaio didn't stop. "He never thought this day would come."

Arpaio's defense lawyer vigorously disputed that a person with nearly 60 years in law enforcement would violate a court order, putting the blame on a former attorney who gave bad legal advice.

Critics hope the eight-day trial in federal court in Phoenix will bring a long-awaited comeuppance for the defiant 85-year-old who led crackdowns that divided immigrant families and escaped accountability.

His tactics drew fierce opponents as well as enthusiastic supporters nationwide who championed what they considered a tough-on-crime approach, including forcing inmates to wear pink underwear and housing them in tents outside in the desert heat.

Arpaio spent nine of his 24 years in office doing the sort of local immigration enforcement that President Donald Trump has advocated. To build his highly touted deportation force, Trump is reviving a long-standing program that deputizes local officers to enforce federal immigration law.

Arpaio's lawyers say the former sheriff is charged with a crime for cooperating with U.S. immigration officials, which the Trump administration now encourages.

His legal troubles played a major role in voters turning him out of office in November after a campaign in which he appeared alongside Trump at several rallies in Arizona.

Now, Trump is in office and Arpaio is on trial.

If convicted, Arpaio could face up to six months in jail, though lawyers who have followed his case doubt that a man of his age would be put behind bars.

The former six-term sheriff of metro Phoenix has acknowledged defying a judge's 2011 order in a racial profiling lawsuit by prolonging the patrols for months. But he insists it was not intentional. To win a conviction, prosecutors must prove he violated the order on purpose.

Unlike other local police leaders who left immigration enforcement to U.S. authorities, Arpaio made hundreds of arrests in traffic patrols that sought out immigrants and business raids in which his officers targeted immigrants who used fraudulent IDs to get jobs.

His immigration powers were eventually stripped away by the courts and federal government, culminating with a judge ruling in 2013 that Arpaio's officers racially profiled Latinos.

Arpaio's defense centers around what his attorneys said were weaknesses in the court order that failed to acknowledge times when deputies would detain immigrants and later hand them over to federal authorities.

"He followed the law as the law exists," said Dennis Wilenchik, Arpaio's lead attorney.

Prosecutors are seeking to use Arpaio's own words against him in their case.

The sheriff's office issued a news release a week after the judge told it to stop the patrols saying it would continue to enforce immigration laws. Arpaio also gave a March 2012 TV interview in which he said his office was still detaining immigrants who were in the country illegally.

Tim Casey, who defended Arpaio in the profiling case for nearly six years, was forced to take the stand against his former client, saying he had several meetings with the lawman to discuss the judge's order. Arpaio rested his chin on the palm of his hand Casey reluctantly testified.

The questioning got bogged down in objections over whether attorney-client privilege barred Casey from providing details of the conversations.

Casey says he told Arpaio that his officers either had to arrest immigrants on state charges or release them. Prosecutors say Arpaio turned the detainees over to federal authorities in violation of the court order.

The retired lawman lost a request to prohibit prosecutors from mentioning comments he made about immigration during his last three campaigns.

He also lost a last-ditch effort to let a jury instead of a judge decide whether he is guilty, with the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejecting the request.

It's not known whether Arpaio will testify in his defense.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/j...rumps-48275037

There is nothing wrong with anything Sheriff Joe said about illegal immigration. He was always truthful, honest, respectful, but determined to enforce the law to protect our citizens, businesses, coffers and nation.

POSTED JUN 27, 2017 01:34 PM CDT

BY DEBRA CASSENS WEISS

A former lawyer for Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio was forced to testify Monday in Arpaio’s criminal contempt trial for allegedly violating a judge’s order.

Arpaio, who lost his bid for re-election, is accused of violating a court order that barred him from detaining people only because he believed they were in the country illegally. His former lawyer, Tim Casey, testified on Monday that he told Arpaio that immigrants could not be detained unless they were arrested on state charges, report the Associated Press, the Phoenix New Times and the Arizona Republic.

U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton generally allowed Casey to testify about his recollections of conversations, but generally blocked testimony involving hearsay or Casey’s frame of mind, according to the Arizona Republic account. Casey was represented by his own ethics lawyer.

Prosecutors say Arpaio continued to detain individuals based on a suspicion that they were in the country illegally for at least 17 months after the judge ordered a stop to the arrests. In opening arguments, Justice Department lawyer Victor Salgado said Arpaio’s public statements show he knew he was defying the court order.

“I’m still gonna do what I’m doing,” Arpaio told reporters in April 2012. “I’m still gonna arrest illegal aliens.”

Arpaio’s defense lawyer at trial, Dennis Wilenchik, claimed the injunction wasn’t clear and Casey had “dropped the ball” in explaining the order.

http://www.abajournal.com/news/artic..._contempt_tria

Megan Cassidy , The Republic Published 8:06 p.m. MT June 29, 2017 | Updated 12 hours ago

Closing arguments set for July 6 for the longtime Maricopa County sheriff

Both sides in the criminal contempt trial against former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio rested their cases Thursday afternoon, wrapping up proceedings in half the time allotted.

Arpaio is accused of intentionally violating a federal judge’s order that barred his signature immigration patrols. The trial was scheduled to last until July 7, but now only a few hours of closing arguments remain pending.

These are scheduled for July 6, and each side will get up to two hours to make its case.

Trial surprisingly unsurprising

In many ways, the trial was remarkable for what it wasn’t.

Absent were the protesters that had lined Phoenix’s federal courthouse at nearly every hearing when Arpaio was in office. A room set up for overflow seating remained empty and eventually was shuttered after presiding U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton noted there was plenty of empty space in the courtroom.

And the trial itself offered few surprises, as nearly all of the evidence presented by federal prosecutors echoed the civil-contempt case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and others two years ago.

Prosecutors called no victims of illegal detention to the witness stand, although they successfully blocked a defense motion that would have prevented them from doing so.

And the star of the show, Arpaio, never testified in his own defense.

Arpaio was present each of the four days in court though, attentive to each of the witnesses. The former sheriff seemed in high spirits throughout the proceedings, often chatting and joking with reporters in the hallways.

Asked why he wasn’t wearing the signature pistol pin on his tie, Arpaio quipped, “I don’t bring guns into the courthouse,” and chuckled.

'A David-and-Goliath battle in there'

Lydia Guzman, a civil-rights activist and longtime Arpaio foe, called the trial “painful” to watch.

“I love the DOJ, but I think that they probably could have sent some more experienced lawyers,” she said. “I think this is administration stuff.”

Guzman said she believed President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice held off on assigning its more seasoned attorneys to the case.

Arpaio was one of Trump’s earliest supporters, and the two share matching hard-line immigration platforms.

“Honestly, I think this is a toss of the coin,” Guzman said when asked for her prediction on the trial’s outcome. “It was a David-and-Goliath battle in there, and that’s what hurt.”

Willful violation or an unclear order?

The court order at issue came during the course of a decade-old racial-profiling case against the Sheriff’s Office. U.S. District Court Judge G. Murray Snow issued a preliminary order against the agency in December 2011.

The order stated that deputies could not detain any individuals solely because they were suspected of being in the country without authorization and were not accused of a crime.

Deputies continued to detain these individuals, turning them over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Border Patrol, until the order became permanent in May 2013.

Prosecutors from the U.S. Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section said the practice led to at least 171 victims illegally detained.

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/...ial/441674001/

Oh it's definitely an "unclear order"!!

FREE SHERIFF JOE!!