Documents showing how subpoenas were obtained and executed during the grand-jury investigation into New Times are missing from a court file, which has led Judge Anna Baca to order the Maricopa County Attorney's office to turn over those documents by Wednesday and appear at a hearing next Monday, the Arizona Republic reports. At issue is if there was more wrongdoing during the course of the investigation than is currently known. The County Attorney's office has already admitted that prosecutors didn't notify the grand-jury foreman and judge within 10 days of issuing subpoenas in the New Times case, which is required by Arizona law. New Times writer Stephen Lemons asks: "Could the subpoenas be missing because they might offer proof that Wilenchik did not play by the rules?" He points to a new column by Michael Lacey which says that the special prosecutor personally demanded he and Jim Larkin be arrested, asked for the arrests of the paper's attorneys, and "sought tens of millions of dollars in sanctions, fines that would have bankrupted New Times."
The decision handed down last night by the Chandler Public Library Board ended a mini-brouhaha in this Phoenix suburb. It all started a few months ago, when Larry Edwards made public his objection to New Times being available at a library branch shared by a high school. The board also ruled that George Carlin's audiobook When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? would stay in the library.
Special prosecutor Dennis Wilenchik has previously said that he did not know who sent Maricopa County sheriff's deputies to pick up Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin earlier this month after they revealed the Phoenix New Times was the target of a grand jury probe. But on Friday, a police spokesman said that the arrests were ordered by M. Rob Somers, an attorney at Wilenchik's firm and one of four attorneys at the firm deputized by County Attorney Andrew Thomas to be special prosecutors, the East Valley Tribune reports. "Is Wilenchik the Sgt. Schultz of the Arizona bar?," asks New Times' Stephen Lemons, referring to the famed Hogan's Heroes character. "He knows noth-ink, NOTH-INK about what's going on in his own office with highly-paid attorneys under his direction?"
The alt-weekly has filed a lawsuit in federal court claiming that the 8-year-old Arizona law used to investigate it for publishing Sheriff Joe Arpaio's home address on its website infringes on the First Amendment, the East Valley Tribune reports. The paper's attorneys want Judge Robert Broomfield to block prosecutors anywhere in the state from using the law. The County Attorney's office is crafting a response to the suit, according to the Tribune.
A Maricopa County Superior Court judge yesterday unsealed the grand jury records of the county's investigation of the alt-weekly, which was dropped last Friday. "Not a shred of evidence was ever presented to a single juror, and not a charge was filed," according to the Arizona Republic. The transcripts mirror the story laid out by New Times last week, but there was at least one new detail: After an Oct. 11 hearing, special prosecutor Dennis Wilenchik and New Times reporter Paul Rubin nearly came to blows during a recess. New Times also reports the documents show the county made payments of nearly $2 million to Wilenchik's firm for handling the case. In another story, Wilenchik tells the Republic that while he didn't personally order the arrest of Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, he had no regrets about it. "They deserved to be arrested," he says. "I don't have a problem with their arrest."
To show solidarity with Phoenix New Times, members of AAN are providing links on their websites that direct their readers to the many places on the internet where the home address of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is listed. Last week, New Times disclosed that its executives, writers, and even its readers were the target of a sweeping grand jury probe relating to the paper's publishing the sheriff's home address online; this disclosure led to the paper's co-founders being arrested. One day later, all charges against New Times were dropped. "Our association and its members won't tolerate this sort of attack on the right of a member paper to publish information that is and ought to be public record," says Tim Redmond, AAN First Amendment Chair Tim Redmond and executive editor of the San Francisco Bay Guardian.
As we reported late on Friday, all charges against Phoenix New Times have been dropped. The paper and its executives faced charges for publishing Sheriff Joe Arpaio's home address on the internet and for disclosing grand jury information. Now the Arizona Republic is reporting that the State Bar Association has launched an internal investigation into Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas and special prosecutor Dennis Wilenchik, in part for their actions in the New Times case. In addition, attorneys for Phoenix Newspapers, Inc., which publishes the Republic, have filed a motion to unseal all transcripts and court filings related to the case. Lastly, New Times reports that the disorderly conduct charge that reporter Ray Stern received last week for looking at public documents has not been dismissed.
Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas announced this afternoon that he was dismissing the case against Village Voice Media executives Jim Larkin and Michael Lacey, who were arrested last night after publishing a story revealing that their Phoenix New Times was a target of a grand jury probe. Thomas said that the case had been grossly mishandled, according to the Arizona Republic. "It has become clear to me the investigation has gone in a direction I would not have authorized," Thomas says. The grand jury had been convened to investigate charges that the New Times violated the law when it posted Sheriff Joe Arpaio's home address on its website in 2004.
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