Joe Arpaio update

[struggle4progress]

... Since taking office over 23 years ago, politicians of all strips have sought to align themselves with the iconic lawman ... However, since admitting in court last week that he was investigating the wife of the federal judge overseeing his contempt hearing, that might be changing. "Let all the facts play out on what's going on, and after the entire trial then we can talk about it," said Gov. Doug Ducey after he was asked if he still supports the sheriff. It's quite a change for the governor who was running campaign ads last summer that starred Arpaio ...
Arpaio supporters backing away
Posted: Apr 28, 2015 10:17 PM EDT
Updated: Apr 29, 2015 11:32 AM EDT
By Dennis Welch

Lawyers for Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio have objected to questioning of the lawman by a federal judge about a secret investigation into the judge's wife. Attorney Michele Iafrate has filed an objection to the "unorthodox process" that saw U.S. District Judge Murray Snow question Arpaio from the bench last week during a contempt of court hearing ... "The court nor any other party previously provided it to defendants nor gave notice that defendant Arpaio would be questioned about it," Iafrate wrote. Arpaio testified that he believed his then-attorney had hired a private investigator to investigate Snow's wife for purportedly making a comment about the judge not wanting the sheriff to get re-elected in 2012 ...
Lawyers for Sheriff Arpaio object to judge's questioning
Posted: Apr 29, 2015 3:40 PM EDT
Updated: Apr 29, 2015 8:26 PM EDT

... Karen Clark, who Casey has hired as his own ethics counsel, said the move is directly related to testimony the sheriff gave last week in his contempt trial before a different judge. In that case, Arpaio told Judge Murray Snow that Casey, as his attorney, had hired a private investigator to look into allegations that Snow’s wife had told someone else that the judge “wanted to do everything to make sure I’m not elected.” What complicates the matter, Clark said, is that Jerry Sheridan, Arpaio’s chief deputy, testified the following day that there was no investigation into Snow, his wife or his family ... The case before Snow involves charges that the sheriff and his top officers ignored the judge’s orders to stop racially profiling people. That stems from what Snow found were practices of deputies who said they were looking for those not in the country legally but actually stopping and detaining people largely because they were Hispanic. And the judge said the practices continued even after the Department of Homeland Security stripped the sheriff’s department of its authority to enforce federal immigration laws ...
Lawyer leaves Arpaio case, cites ethics
Posted: Wednesday, April 29, 2015 9:32 am
By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services

... Tim Casey said he was ethically required to leave the case after Arpaio admitted under oath last week he had secretly investigated U.S. District Judge Murray Snow. KTAR legal analyst Monica Lindstrom said Casey's affiliation with Arpaio's investigation is the reasoning behind the withdrawal request. &quot Arpaio), when he was on the stand, told Judge Snow that his attorney, Tim Casey, hired a private investigator to investigate Judge Snow," she said. Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan denied Arpaio's claim, meaning Casey could be called as a witness in the case ...
Attorney requests withdrawal from Sheriff Joe Arpaio contempt case
BY BOB MCCLAY, Reporter | April 29, 2015 @ 2:23 pm

During Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s contempt of court hearing last week, U.S. District Court Judge Murray Snow surprised the sheriff by questioning him about a Phoenix New Times article from last year. The article said the sheriff’s office hired a Seattle computer consultant named Dennis Montgomery to investigate supposed collusion between Snow — who had ruled against the sheriff in a racial profiling case — and the U.S. Department of Justice ... While under oath last Friday at the contempt hearing, Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan told Snow that Montgomery,“had information that the CIA hacked into individual bank accounts, I think there were approximately 50,000 of them, Maricopa County residents. He had their names, their bank account numbers, and their dollar amounts” ... “There are always kooks that are claiming that they work for CIA and they have stuff,” Banks said. “But I haven’t heard of any where they are in cahoots with local officials. That is a new twist” ...
Revelation That Sheriff Arpaio Hired Informant For CIA Investigation Raises New Legal Questions
By Jude Joffe-Block
April 29, 2015

[Downwinder]

1. The Joe Saga gets better and better.

[Monk06]

2. Sheriffs should not be elected. Especially in the south where corrupt, autocratic sheriffs are

looked on as folk heros.

[jmowreader]

3. Neither should prosecutors or coroners

The prosecutor in the county I live in plea bargained over half a million bucks' worth of felony they by false pretenses down to two counts of petit theft and got him six months' work release and four months' supervised probation...because he doesn't want to take a chance on messing up his 99.7 percent conviction rate.

[Recursion]

4. Elected sheriffs are why Mississippi has so many black sheriffs

So I'm not ready to say no to that just yet.

[Gothmog]

5. Thank you for the updates on Sheriff Joe

He needs to spend some time in his own jail