Supreme Court rejects ex-Sheriff Joe Arpaio challenge to criminal prosecutor appointment

Washington Examiner ^ | April 29, 2019 | Melissa Quinn

[Coronal]

Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio lost his bid at the Supreme Court on Monday challenging a lower court’s appointment of a special prosecutor in his criminal case.

Arpaio earned a national reputation for harsh conditions in the Arizona prisons he ran for a quarter century, before losing his 2016 reelection bid.

Arpaio was found in criminal contempt of court in 2017 for not following a judge’s orders to stop traffic patrols that targeted illegal immigrants. President Trump then pardoned the former Maricopa County sheriff.

Arpaio, 86, is now attempting to vacate his conviction. At issue in the Supreme Court case was Arpaio's request that the justices reverse an order from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals replacing the Justice Department with a special prosecutor in his criminal prosecution and appeal. The San Francisco-based court tapped the special prosecutor, Christopher Caldwell, in 2018 to defend a criminal contempt order against Arpaio.

But the justices on Monday rejected Arpaio’s request for the high court to block the appointment.

[House Atreides]

Arpaio is dead to me since he decided to be a spoiler in the Republican primary in last year’s Arizona Senate race.

[b4me]

I still want to like him, he tried to do good(for the country) things while sheriff - but when he did the cold case posse - obama birth certificate thing and they ended up just telling us what we already knew it was a fake, i lost interest in Joe. They kept saying they had some thing of real importance - then it got supposedly handed over to some department in DC - then crickets.

[Revel]

It sounds like you got your information form DU.

[JustTheTruth]

IMHO, Joe did a lot of good over the years in AZ.

However, he failed to recognize when it was time to hang up the badge and retire. Had he done so, he could have gone out in style and in a way that would have ensured that his replacement would be a conservative likely to continue to pursue the same or similar conservative policies, even if approached in different ways.

That was a big failure... but I still love and appreciate the guy, his courage, brashness, outsized ego and all.

[trebb]

Yep - I got ‘chided” for saying he needed to step aside so as to not give the seat away...loved what he had been all about but his ego pushed him to stick i tout despite the recent troubles he had been going through...