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Police


LAW ENFORCEMENT "ISN'T A PROFESSION," JUDGE RULES IN CHALLENGE TO ARIZONA'S
CLEMENCY BOARD

Katya Schwenk April 19, 2022 11:40AM

Maricopa County Superior Court in downtown Phoenix. Tony Webster

A judge has dismissed death row prisoner Clarence Dixon's last-ditch effort to
challenge the makeup of Arizona's clemency board.

Attorneys for Dixon had argued that the board, which later this month will
consider commuting the death sentence, was illegally stacked with former cops.

State law requires that the board have no more than two members from any
professional discipline. Three members of the five-person board worked in law
enforcement for decades. The board chair is a former assistant attorney general,
and the other seat is vacant.

But Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Stephen Hopkins disagreed. On Tuesday
morning, Hopkins struck down the special action suit, which was filed last week,
on the grounds that law enforcement "has not been thought of as a 'profession.'"



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Dixon's execution is scheduled for May 11. Arizona Attorney General Mark
Brnovich has tried for a year to issue a death warrant in his case.

Dixon was convicted of the murder of Deana Bowdoin, a 21-year-old ASU student,
who was raped and stabbed to death in her apartment in 1978. Dixon, Bowdoin's
neighbor at the time, wasn't connected to the crime until decades later, when
DNA evidence led detectives to him. He was already serving life in prison for
another sexual assault of a young woman.

Bowdoin's sister has continued to advocate for Dixon's other victims in the
years since, and has said she supports the death penalty in his case. "When my
mother passed in 2009, all she wanted was some final justice for Deana, and that
people would always remember Deana," her sister, Leslie, wrote in a letter to
governor Doug Ducey in 2020.

If the execution proceeds as scheduled, it will be the first time that Arizona
has carried out the death penalty since a badly botched execution in 2014.

In the days since Dixon's death warrant was issued, his team of attorneys has
been busy attempting to stay the execution. They have argued that Dixon's
execution would be unconstitutional, given his well-documented, serious mental
illness.

And they also filed this special action suit, arguing that the clemency board's
makeup violated Dixon's right to fair legal proceedings.

The Arizona Board of Executive Clemency considers a variety of petitions from
imprisoned people for commutations or pardons. Only the governor has the power
to commute sentences, but he considers the recommendations of the clemency
panel.

Dixon's case is the first capital case that the board has heard in years, and
thus the first such case that has been heard by these five panelists. Clemency
hearings are one of the last legal obstacles standing in the way of an
execution. Dixon's hearing is scheduled for April 28, less than two weeks before
his scheduled death.



In their lawsuit, Dixon's attorneys made the case that three board members
— Salvatore Freni, Louis Quiñonez, and Michael Johnson — all came from the same
professional discipline, law enforcement.

The three board members have, between them, a combined 85 years of experience in
the field. Freni and Johnson worked at the Phoenix Police Department for 30
years and 21 years, respectively. Freni served as an officer, detective, and
lieutenant; Johnson spent most of his time as a homicide detective, and later
went on to serve three terms on the Phoenix City Council.



Quiñonez, meanwhile, worked for 27 years as a federal law enforcement officer
with several agencies, and has since taught criminal justice at Glendale
Community College.

Hopkins, in his ruling, questioned whether law enforcement could be considered a
profession at all. "It is not regulated as other professions are, and has little
of the characteristics of what is typically considered a profession," he wrote.
This, he said, called Dixon's argument into question.

"If the legislature intended to say, 'no more than two members of the Board may
have prior law enforcement experience,' it could have easily done so," he wrote.

Furthermore, Hopkins ruled that attorneys had not successfully argued that the
three board members came from different disciplines, given their separate roles
in law enforcement. "To the extent law enforcement may be considered a
'profession,' the Court finds from the information presented that each of these
three members represents a different 'discipline' within the large rubric of law
enforcement," he wrote.

In a statement Tuesday, attorneys for Dixon said they planned to appeal the
ruling.

"Mr. Dixon is entitled to a fair clemency hearing before an impartial clemency
board that complies fully with state law, not one that is illegally stacked with
law enforcement officials," wrote Joshua Spears, one of Dixon's attorneys. "We
are reviewing our options to appeal the Superior Court’s ruling."

You can read Judge Hopkins' full opinion below:



PDF — HOPKINS_RULING_ON_CLEMENCY_BOARD_PHOENIX_NEW_TIMES.PDF


KEEP PHOENIX NEW TIMES FREE... Since we started Phoenix New Times, it has been
defined as the free, independent voice of Phoenix, and we'd like to keep it that
way. With local media under siege, it's more important than ever for us to rally
support behind funding our local journalism. You can help by participating in
our "I Support" program, allowing us to keep offering readers access to our
incisive coverage of local news, food and culture with no paywalls.
Make a one-time donation today for as little as $1.

Katya Schwenk is a staff writer for Phoenix New Times. Originally from
Burlington, Vermont, she now covers issues ranging from policing to far-right
politics here in Phoenix. She has worked as a breaking news correspondent in
Rabat, Morocco, for Morocco World News, a government technology reporter for
Scoop News Group in Washington, D.C., and a local reporter in Vermont for
VTDigger. Her freelance work has been published in Business Insider, the
Intercept, and the American Prospect, among other places.
Contact: Katya Schwenk
Follow:
Twitter: @ktyschwnk



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Bill Montgomery


RACHEL MITCHELL APPOINTED INTERIM MARICOPA COUNTY ATTORNEY, REACTION MIXED

Katya Schwenk April 20, 2022 2:09PM

Rachel Mitchell is sworn in as Maricopa County Attorney. Katya Schwenk

Maricopa County has appointed Rachel Mitchell as interim county attorney.

Mitchell is a career and high-ranking prosecutor within the Maricopa County
Attorney's Office and is known for her interrogation of Supreme Court Justice
Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, who had accused him of sexual
assault.

Mitchell is one of three Republican candidates for the office to qualify for the
ballot this fall. This means that she will now run for that office with a
significant advantage as the incumbent.

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors decided to choose from among three
Republican candidates bidding to replace former County Attorney Allister Adel,
who resigned last month.

Supervisors took a 15-minute executive session Wednesday morning to hear legal
advice on the appointment. Then they voted in an open meeting. The vote was
unanimous.

“At this point, as of today, who is the best person to step in that role, to
bring the office forward, to bring stability?” asked Supervisor Steve Gallardo.
“It is Rachel Mitchell.”

Gallardo still said he would have favored an “open process” where others —
besides the three candidates — were allowed to apply for the appointment.

Mitchell was considered for the interim position along with Gina Godbehere,
prosecutor for the city of Goodyear, and Anni Foster, Governor Doug Ducey’s
general counsel. All three submitted written replies to questions from the board
of supervisors this week.

Mitchell has long been a powerful figure in the Maricopa County Attorney’s
Office, where she has worked for more than 30 years. She served for years as the
head of the agency’s sex crimes division, handling some high-profile sex abuse
cases.

She served as second-in-command in the office for a time under Bill Montgomery.
It was a surprise when, in 2019, Adel beat out Mitchell for the appointment to
the office, after Montgomery vacated his role for an Arizona Supreme Court
appointment.

Mitchell was one of several key bureau chiefs who signed a letter in February
urging Adel to resign, after growing questions about her sobriety and absences
from the office. She has since partnered with Jennifer Liewer, Adel’s ousted
communications director, to run her campaign for the office.

Her opponents had mixed reactions Wednesday to the appointment.

Godbehere wrote, "I am disappointed in the selection of the status quo candidate
by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. I am retiring from the City of
Goodyear to pursue my candidacy. I am grateful for the support across our county
in my pursuit of restoring trust in the County Attorney’s Office."

Foster, the third conservative candidate, tweeted that she would issue "an
announcement about my future plans" in the next few days, though did not
elaborate.

Meanwhile, Julie Gunnigle, Mitchell's Democratic opponent, wrote in a statement
to Phoenix New Times it was “unfortunate that [the board] appointed someone from
the same corrupt office we desperately need to reform.”

“If Mitchell was going to do better than her predecessors, she would have spoken
up before she saw a way to benefit herself politically,” Gunnigle added.

Supervisors expressed their feelings of urgency over the appointment at the
special meeting Wednesday. Supervisor Thomas Galvin, congratulating Mitchell,
said the office had fallen into “disarray” in recent months.

“It needs a lot of help, and it needs a lot of restoration, immediately,” he
said.

After the board voted on the position, Mitchell was sworn in officially and took
questions from reporters.
click to enlarge
Maricopa County board of supervisors chairman Bill Gates speaks after Mitchell
is appointed.
Katya Schwenk

Asked how she planned to balance her campaign and her new role, Mitchell said
she would not neglect the position “in the interest of my own campaign.” She
also noted that she would not be the first county attorney who led a campaign
while in office.

“There’s precedent for that,” she said. “But I recognize that this is a special
situation that’s going to take an extraordinary amount of hard work. I have
worked extraordinarily hard throughout my career. I am surrounding myself with
the best people who are going to help me get that accomplished.”

Mitchell declined to set a specific timeline for addressing charging backlogs,
saying it was still premature. This was “not a situation that is fixed
overnight,” she said.

In a statement, the Arizona branch of the American Civil Liberties Union
expressed frustration that there was little public involvement in the
appointment process, saying that the board had “ignored community demands to
make the appointment process transparent.”

“Voters must be allowed to decide who the next Maricopa County Attorney will be
— without the huge advantage that incumbency provides,” wrote K.M. Bell, a
campaign strategist with the ACLU.

As of this morning, however, it is too late. Mitchell will head into the August
primary as the incumbent.

Mitchell will face her two opponents in the Republican primary in August. The
winner will take on Gunnigle, who narrowly lost to Adel 2020, in the general
election in November.



KEEP PHOENIX NEW TIMES FREE... Since we started Phoenix New Times, it has been
defined as the free, independent voice of Phoenix, and we'd like to keep it that
way. With local media under siege, it's more important than ever for us to rally
support behind funding our local journalism. You can help by participating in
our "I Support" program, allowing us to keep offering readers access to our
incisive coverage of local news, food and culture with no paywalls.
Make a one-time donation today for as little as $1.

Katya Schwenk is a staff writer for Phoenix New Times. Originally from
Burlington, Vermont, she now covers issues ranging from policing to far-right
politics here in Phoenix. She has worked as a breaking news correspondent in
Rabat, Morocco, for Morocco World News, a government technology reporter for
Scoop News Group in Washington, D.C., and a local reporter in Vermont for
VTDigger. Her freelance work has been published in Business Insider, the
Intercept, and the American Prospect, among other places.
Contact: Katya Schwenk
Follow:
Twitter: @ktyschwnk



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Prosecutors


COUNTY ATTORNEY CANDIDATES ADMIT NO FRAUD IN 2020 ELECTION

Katya Schwenk April 20, 2022 8:15AM

U.S. Senate Republicans brought in Maricopa County prosecutor Rachel Mitchell to
question Christine Blasey Ford in 2018. Now, Mitchell is running for county
attorney. YouTube

Prior to this week, two conservative candidates for Maricopa County Attorney had
dodged questions on their views on the 2020 presidential election in Maricopa
County.

That changed Monday when the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors released
answers to its questionnaire for Republican candidates. The board asked
candidates if they agreed with the county's decision to certify the election
results, an acknowledgment that whoever gets picked will represent the board in
legal matters.

All three Republican candidates — including Gina Godbehere and Anni Foster, who
had initially avoided answering the question — said the board did not err in
certifying the election results.

The questionnaire is meant to help the board of supervisors select an interim
county attorney to fill the vacancy left by Allister Adel, who resigned at the
end of March. That's until a new top prosecutor is elected this fall.



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The county announced last week it would select the person to serve in the
temporary position from the three conservative candidates in the race —
Godbehere, Foster, and Rachel Mitchell. The board of supervisors could decide as
soon as Wednesday.

Existing law requires that anyone appointed to the interim position be part of
the same political party as the predecessor. Adel was a registered Republican.

Still, the Democratic candidate for county attorney, Julie Gunnigle, has
criticized the county for deciding to choose an interim attorney from a slate of
people campaigning for the office, instead of someone independent. "The board of
supervisors is putting their thumb on a contested primary," she told Phoenix New
Times last week.

Now, one of the three conservative candidates will go into the primary election
as an incumbent, instead of a newcomer, which is widely seen as a significant
advantage, especially if the race is tight.

The county held in-person interviews Monday, a spokesperson said, and released
the candidates' answers to the questionnaires that evening. The second question
of three dealt with the 2020 presidential election in the county and the
seemingly endless, and baseless, allegations of fraud that it inspired.

"It is important to note that the long-awaited attorney general's report, issued
18 months after the election, still does not outline evidence of widespread
fraud," wrote Godbehere, a longtime MCAO prosecutor, and prosecutor for the city
of Goodyear, in response.

When asked the same question by Arizona's Family just weeks earlier, Godbehere
had said, "It's not proper to sit there when I haven't read all the details and
the facts to give an opinion one way or another."

Meanwhile, Foster, who is currently general counsel for Governor Doug Ducey,
wrote in response: "As your counselor and advocate, I would continue the
vigorous defense of the County's actions ... in the 2020 elections." Like
Godbehere, she had previously avoided answering the question when confronted by
media.



Some in the Arizona GOP are not taking the news well.

"Can we say gutless? That's all I needed to know," wrote one user on Telegram,
in response to a post by EZAZ.org, a Phoenix-based conservative advocacy group,
highlighting the candidates' answers. "Spineless," another wrote.

Mitchell, a prosecutor who has worked her way up through the Maricopa County
Attorney's Office for more than 30 years, was the only Republican candidate who
has consistently denied the election fraud claims.

She emphasized her views again in her questionnaire, writing: "I take the
protection of our democracy seriously and if appointed, will make this a
priority as your legal counsel."



It's noteworthy that Godbehere took a different tack when answering questions
about "election integrity" in a survey distributed by EZAZ.org.

"As we have seen in previous years, elections have not always gone smoothly,"
Godbehere wrote in that previous answer, saying the county had "had problems" in
2018. She went on to say that she would create an "Election Integrity Task
Force" and "root out any potential problems and ensure that in Maricopa County
we will have fair elections."

The questionnaires are revealing in other ways, too. In them, the three
candidates outline their priorities for the office and the ways they would
combat understaffing in the office.

Mitchell submitted a five-page response to the county's questions. Among her top
priorities, she wrote, are rebuilding the office's relationship with local law
enforcement, and "strengthen[ing] oversight" of the county attorney's seat, and
eliminating the backlog of cases in the office.

The latter she plans to accomplish by conducting a "full review" of the charging
processes, looking at "technology solutions," and updating staff assignments to
lower caseloads to address the problem, even if employee shortage continues.

Mitchell also noted she would focus on reversing the understaffing currently
plaguing the office. "The handling of protest cases and other
negative/inaccurate media coverage," she wrote, referring to the bogus "ACAB"
gang charges prosecutors leveled against protesters last year, had harmed
morale. Better oversight of prosecutions was needed, she said.

Mitchell's campaign did not immediately answer questions about what "inaccurate"
media coverage she was referring to, though MCAO has been the subject of plenty
of media scrutiny during Adel's short tenure at the office.

Foster and Godbehere gave similar answers. Foster wrote that her key focus was
to "bring public confidence and stability to the office." Godbehere emphasized a
focus on "community trust, law enforcement trust, and employee trust" as her key
priorities.

On their face, the conservatives' answers are not too different from Gunnigle's
promises to fix the office. But the Democrat has argued that longtime MCAO
bureaucrats are not equipped to bring the kind of change needed in the office.

Now that the county has completed its interviews and received the
questionnaires, the board of supervisors is deliberating on a potential
appointee.



Fields Moseley, a spokesperson for the county, told New Times the board plans to
hold a special executive session Wednesday morning to deliberate, and may vote
on the issue immediately afterward, if there are no remaining questions.
KEEP PHOENIX NEW TIMES FREE... Since we started Phoenix New Times, it has been
defined as the free, independent voice of Phoenix, and we'd like to keep it that
way. With local media under siege, it's more important than ever for us to rally
support behind funding our local journalism. You can help by participating in
our "I Support" program, allowing us to keep offering readers access to our
incisive coverage of local news, food and culture with no paywalls.
Make a one-time donation today for as little as $1.

Katya Schwenk is a staff writer for Phoenix New Times. Originally from
Burlington, Vermont, she now covers issues ranging from policing to far-right
politics here in Phoenix. She has worked as a breaking news correspondent in
Rabat, Morocco, for Morocco World News, a government technology reporter for
Scoop News Group in Washington, D.C., and a local reporter in Vermont for
VTDigger. Her freelance work has been published in Business Insider, the
Intercept, and the American Prospect, among other places.
Contact: Katya Schwenk
Follow:
Twitter: @ktyschwnk



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   Death Row Case
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 * Sponsored Content From: [%sponsoredBy%]
   
   
   [%TITLE%]

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