Former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas
I can’t imagine former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas was surprised by the findings announced yesterday by Arizona’s Supreme Court. Lawyers I know here thought the investigatory complaint was long overdue.
Kitchen sink approach.
But while asserting there are more than enough “incontrovertible charges” to get the goods on Thomas, one local pundit, Arizona Republic columnist Robert Robb, made the point in his op-ed yesterday that Independent Bar Counsel John Gleason’s probable cause findings were needlessly undercut by “egregious overreach” and “overcharging.”
At 86 pages, the probable cause investigative complaint covers a lot of ground but as Robb correctly points out, it undermines credibility by its overreach. But then this is how many lawyers unfortunately style their complaints, throwing out every remotely likely actionable theory except the proverbial ‘kitchen sink.’ See Summary of alleged ethical violations.
Last July, I blogged about Gleason, head of Colorado’s supposed ‘Best in Class’ Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel at Arizona Supreme Court orders implementation of modifications to attorney discipline system. Next month, Arizona implements its new discipline system, which is largely modeled on Colorado’s.
The fish driving a car.
It’s downright exceptionally infrequent for prosecutors to be charged with ethical violations. And while it may not be as rare as a fish driving a car, it’s almost as apocryphal. Indeed, a recent instance, the case of sex-texting Calumet County, Wisconsin District Attorney Ken Kratz gives this view support. Kratz was accused by 25 year old Stephanie Van Groll of sending her racy, suggestive text messages, such as whether she was “the kind of girl that likes secret contact with an older married elected DA.”
She also alleged he called her a “tall, young, hot nymph.” Kratz admitted to texting Van Groll. Nevertheless, Wisconsin’s Office of Lawyer Regulation sent Van Groll a letter stating, “Although District Attorney Kratz’s communication with you was inappropriate, it did not appear to involve possible professional misconduct.” But thanks to considerable public outrage, the Office of Lawyer Regulation decided to reopen the Ken Kratz case. Also see Wisconsin’s Calumet County DA faces removal.
Prosecutorial immunity under scrutiny.
But perhaps in a sign that fish may someday drive cars, on October 6, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument 09-571 in Connick v. Thompson. The case is about whether John Thompson, who exonerated of capital murder and released from death row in 2003, can sue the New Orleans District Attorney’s office for wrongfully convicting him. Thompson was a month away from being executed when newly discovered evidence undermined his murder conviction.
For public policy reasons, courts have long tended toward the view that prosecutors are virtually untouchable. As USA Today reported in its story last October, “Americans can sue almost anyone for almost anything. But they can’t sue prosecutors.” See Prosecuting offices’ immunity tested.
Thompson’s lawsuit alleged his wrongful conviction was the result of the failure of the New Orleans prosecutor’s office to train its attorneys about their legal obligation to turn over evidence that could help defendants prove their innocence.
Noted in the USA Today story was a report from Northern California’s Innocence Project entitled, “Preventable Error: A Report on Prosecutorial Misconduct in California 1997-2009″_Executive_Summary, It is the inaugural study of the organization’s Veritas Initiative.
And according to its findings, “Courts found prosecutors committed misconduct in nearly 700 cases and only six prosecutors were publicly disciplined by the California State Bar. The study also revealed that judges often failed to report misconduct to the State Bar despite having a legal obligation to do so.”
All lathered up but having to wait.
Pundits, pols and legal community-types around here remain lathered up over Andrew Thomas. But they are still going to have to wait for ‘their pound of flesh.’ For an example of community passion, see Andrew Thomas’ “Reckless, Four-Year Campaign of Corruption and Power Abuse,”
For his part, Thomas vows to keep practicing law and to keep fighting. So as he awaits his day in court, it remains to be seen how everything will finally shake out. But suffice it to say, it’s not looking good for him.
Meanwhile, I’ll continue looking with anticipation for the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Connick v. Thompson. Until then, I’ll remain on the lookout for a trout driving a Toyota.
I used to live in Colorado and my perception is that attorney regulation in Colorado under John Gleason is terrible, just terrible.
For instance, I was prosecuted in Routt County without a written affidavit of probable cause signed by a prosecutor. Jane Bennett, wife of the city council president, Kevin Bennett was the only person who signed a criminal complaint of any sort. She complained that I criminally harassed her. The police report stated
“Kay kept yelling that her husband just can’t break the law because he’s council president.” “Kay called her husband an asshole.” “Kay kept shouting phrases you’re breaking the law, obey the constitution and you can’t build that thing.” “Matt said she yelled something about violating building codes and the U.S. Constitution”.
I complained to Gleason that I was prosecuted because I complained that the city council president was building extra buildings in violation of the zoning but he thought that was an OK reason to prosecute someone. I guess that’s what he and Matt Samuelson think. Ask them about Kay Sieverding’s complaint regarding P. Elizabeth Wittemyer. She was a state of Colorado prosector, married to a real estate speculator or developer.
As always, extraordinarily well said and illustrated, Mo!
There is in Colorado a very recent, highly instructive example of extremely serious misconduct by prosecutors, Jolene Blair and Terry Gilmore, including concealment of exculpatory evidence from the defense, that John Gleason and his minions regarded as worthy of no more than mere “public censure”, even though it resulted in the unlawful conviction of innocent Tim Masters, and his imprisonment for 9 years, for a murder they almost certainly knew he did not commit:
http://www.coloradoan.com/article/99999999/NEWS01/71107031/A-Look-Back-Tim-Masters-Case
They had good reason to believe the victim was actually murdered by a surgeon who committed suicide before he could be prosecuted.
In need of another defendant to score political and professional points, they, along with an overzealous detective named Jim Broderick: targeted Masters, a hapless loner of a teenager who admitted to having seen the body on the way to school but having told no one; concealed evidence creating more than reasonable doubt about his guilt; concocted a conviction on the basis of a quack psychologist’s earnest testimony that he must have committed the murders because he had made weird drawings of a sort a lot of teen boys compose.
The unethical prosecutors-turned judges (rewarded by Governor Bill Owens, a dipshit Republican who never met a prosecutor he didn’t love, for their “excellence” as prosecutors with District Court Judgeships) , Terry Gilmore and Jolene Blair, were slapped on the wrist by Gleason and his minions with public censure for their apparent malicious prosecution, and obstruction of justice and subornation of perjury. They were also voted out of office. The remain free to practice law, however.
Whatever one might think of Andrew Thomas, and I’m no fan, how can it be that his pursuit of unwarranted actions against his political enemies that were dismissed (and certainly never resulted in anyone going to prison, and was not, apparently, aided by obstruction of justice or subornation of perjury) warrants his disbarment, in Gleason’s view, whereas Gleason felt Blair and Gilmore warranted mere “public censure” for intentionally sending an innocent kid to prison for nine years?
Remember, this is the same John Gleason who insisted that I be driven from the Colorado bar as a favor to Chief Justice Mary Mullarkey’s Democrat friends in the City and County of Denver, for “interfering with the administration of justice” by winning a $1.22 million jury verdict against, and $850,000 settlement from, the City of Denver, a corrupt bureaucracy that itself used obstruction of justice and subornation of perjury to attempt to convict my client of a crime it knew he did not commit.
The simple truth is that those who enforce the law, John Gleason included, deem themselves above it, whereas they quite enthusiastically cut every corner imaginable, including the commission of felonies, in order to convict those they cannot convict fairly and squarely, and/or to advance, or preserve, their careers.
They only get excited about perjury when it prevents them from getting a conviction. They look the other way when it helps them get one, as is evidenced by their routine recruitment of jailhouse informants, through threats or inducements, to testify that prisoners they’ve never met before suddenly decide to confess to crimes they would not confess to their own mothers.
Gleason and his minions themselves engaged in fraud and other blatantly unlawful or unconstitutional conduct to convict me of interfering with the administration of justice. As you rightly note, however, we attorneys have no remedy when we are the victims of prosecutorial misconduct.
Knowing this, Gleason and his minions indulge in it at whim, with the full approval of the Colorado and US Supreme Courts.
To Gleason, everyone in Arizona, whether or not they despise Andrew Thomas and Joe Arpaio, should tell Gleason, “Physician, heal thyself!”
Hiring John Gleason to investigate prosecutorial misconduct is like hiring Eliot Spitzer to investigate and prosecute prostitution; he knows all about it, but for all the wrong reasons!
I don’t understand why you didn’t post my comment. What do I have to do to get my comments posted?
I have been the target of multiple groundless, harassing prosecutions by Gleason and his minions for over four years now, the reason being that I was the Green Party candidate for Colorado Attorney General in 2002 and have brought cases some corrupt–and politically powerful–people don’t like, exposing their frauds. And I’ve won a handful of them.
In the meantime, I have complained, myself, to that office about serious misconduct committed by attorneys–frauds, lies to the tribunal, lies to Congress, alteration of court records, and more–and that office has NEVER been interested. It has NEVER even done an investigation.
The thing which appears to have really set Mr. Gleason off, in the string of prosecutions he has conducted against me, was that I brought a RICO case in federal court, very well founded, although I withdrew it before making service on the defendants because the court said it would not exercise supplemental jurisdiction over my state law claims. Everything I did was authorized by the federal statute, the federal rules, and the federal judge himself. I was suspended for a year for this imaginary offense.
So Gleason appears to have special vindictiveness for lawyers who bring RICO cases. So what I say to Andrew Thomas, who brought a RICO action–the same kind of case we ought to be seeing multifold in Colorado, involving corrupt public officials and private parties engaging in racketeering–is, “You go, boy!”
Alison Maynard
I have a Macintosh computer running OSX. I used word search for “perjury” and went back to a memo I wrote on 5/29/01 to Under Sheriff Taylor in the Routt County Sheriff’s Office re perjury. I remember delivering it to the sheriffs office but there was no response. I also reported it to the D.A., the state AG, the federal AG and the FBI.
What I don’t understand is what happens inside the U.S. Attorney’s office in Colorado when they get reports of various obstruction complaints.