By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — Joe Arpaio and Susan Bolton were companions in the news here in 2010.
Arpaio, the longtime elected Republican sheriff of Phoenix’s Maricopa County, and Bolton, a federal judge here nominated by President Bill Clinton, both were prominent figures as Arizona legislators tried to discourage illegal immigration, but open-borders street mobs threatened retaliation over the bill signed into law that April, SB 1070.
The sheriff was a strong supporter of the law, but the judge prevented it from taking effect in 2010. The U.S. Supreme Court subsequently threw out the majority of the law.
Arpaio and Bolton should be facing each other next month, in April, as the former sheriff faces a verdict delivered by the judge, who recently denied him a jury trial.
The Seeing Red AZ blog posted on March 3 that Arpaio’s attorney, Mel McDonald, had argued he was entitled to a jury of his peers, but “said his client won’t appeal this latest decision. ‘It’s not surprising,’ McDonald is quoted as saying, noting that Bolton had previously said she was leaning toward deciding the case herself. Bolton declared there is no inherent right to jury trials in cases in which potential jail sentences are limited to six months or less.”
Another federal judge here, G. Murray Snow, had recommended criminal-contempt charges against Arpaio last year for violating a racial-profiling order Snow devised against Arpaio enforcing immigration law. Barack Obama’s Justice Department agreed.
Phoenix-based KPNX-TV reported March 2, “Arpaio’s attorneys had argued for a jury trial so they could question the motives of the judge who referred the criminal-contempt charge for trial. They suggested federal Judge Murray Snow’s anger at Arpaio had led to the referral.”
Arpaio long has been a target of Arizona’s open-borders elite wanting to remove him from office. Last November while adversarial media hounded him, the 84-year-old lawman lost a re-election bid for a seventh four-year term to Democrat Paul Penzone.
In 2015 Arpaio unsuccessfully had asked that Snow recuse himself from monitoring the sheriff after Snow’s wife was overheard in a restaurant saying that Snow hated Arpaio and would do anything to get him out of office.
It became a complex case once the Arizona establishment set out to finish off Arpaio, as it also had crippled other Grand Canyon State officeholders prominent in their efforts against massive illegal immigration.
On March 13, the Associated Press reported that Arpaio’s legal team planned to continue seeking Snow’s recusal.
The AP said that Arpaio’s “attorneys argue the judge (Snow) had improper private conversations with an official hired to monitor the sheriff’s office on behalf of the court, saying the encounters included discussions about whether the sheriff’s office had committed contempt of court. They said ethics rules for federal judges prohibit such conversations.”
Tensions had been high outside the copper-domed state capitol here in April 2010 as crowds of rowdy protesters opposed SB 1070, including truant Latino high school students. Frozen bottles of water as hard as rocks were hurled and riot police came to the scene.
A few protesters chained themselves to capitol doors, and protest graffiti was discovered on the walls.
A few months later, in late July, as the new law was about to take effect, Bolton delighted hostile mobs roaming downtown Phoenix as she blocked key parts of it.
The mobs massed outside Arpaio’s jail doors and waved flags denoting Mexico and also Communist revolutionary Che Guevara as a heavy police presence kept them under watch.
In a March 11 telephone interview with The Wanderer, Arpaio attorney Mel McDonald said that while Arpaio’s trial is scheduled for April 25, “I can’t go into what may be happening” that could affect that date.
Asked how appropriate it was for a judge known to have blocked SB 1070 to preside now over the contempt trial of a man prominently known for favoring it, McDonald replied, “The issues are far different in the 1070 case than in this case.”
Bolton is “actually an extremely good judge,” McDonald said. “I don’t think that history would provide a basis for asking her to recuse herself” now.
She was assigned to the case based on a random draw, he said.
McDonald said Arpaio, whose birthday is in June, is holding up well as he awaits trial.
Arpaio works 12 hours daily at his private office in Fountain Hills, the suburb on the northeast outskirts of the Phoenix metropolitan area where he lives, McDonald said.
The former sheriff is “vitally involved in many of the issues of the day that he continues to speak out on,” said McDonald, who had been appointed to serve as U.S. attorney for the District of Arizona under President Ronald Reagan.
A few years ago, one of Arpaio’s aides in his 50s told The Wanderer that his boss wore him out with his fast pace. McDonald, 75, told this newspaper the same, saying the “hard-working” Arpaio wears him down.
The former sheriff, a Catholic, has attributed his vigor to drinking olive oil as a boy when he delivered groceries in Massachusetts. Both his parents were legal immigrants from Italy; his mother died giving him birth.
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