Here's a thread in progress, Wolf, with a lot of background.

viewtopic.php?f=64&t=6978

I also have a question. This is a bench as opposed to a jury trial. Was this the government's or Arpaio's choice?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48245205/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/#.UAiAdrSx1fE

The case that is being tried right now is not the government case, but a private lawsuit. The plaintiffs are seeking injunctive and declaratory relief, but not money damages -- thus they would not have the option for a jury trial. (My source of info on the nature of the case is here: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Raci ... 718427.php )

OMG! MCSO attorney Tom Liddy is the son of....




Joe Arpaio's Deputy Thinks Most Day-Laborers Are Undocumented

Stanley Young, the lawyer for five people suing the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office for racial profiling, is doing a good job making Sheriff Joe Arpaio look like a racist this morning.

[...]

Under pointed questioning by Young, Arpaio denied that he equated brown-skinned people with illegal immigrants, as a press release from 2007 demonstrates he did. Young took time to go over a letter received by Arpaio from an anti-immigrant group in which Arpaio had emphasized statements about how police shouldn't be afraid to check the status of day laborers. And Young played a video from another press conference in which Arpaio said he'd have a "pure" program that went after illegal immigrants first, and their suspected crimes second.

[...]

Basically, anytime Arpaio was shown some of the blatant bigotry in that book, he blamed it on co-author Len Sherman. And this was despite being read back his testimony from a previous deposition in which he'd said he didn't need to read his own book because he'd written it himself.

[...]

... In another part of the book, Young pointed out, Arpaio wrote that second- and third-generation Mexican-Americans were not part of the American "mainstream."

"My co-author wrote that," Arpaio blurted out.

Within minutes of Sheriff Joe Arpaio taking the witness stand in the racial-profiling case involving his office, attorneys for the plaintiffs began using the sheriff's own public statements, press releases and books to paint the five-term sheriff as a law-enforcement officer whose zeal on immigration enforcement is based on the requests of racist groups and rooted in discriminatory practices.

[...]

Young quickly moved through other statements Arpaio made through the years regarding immigration enforcement, some of which were contained in the sheriff's press releases and others from his 2008 autobiography.

But Arpaio, as he had done in countless depositions and sworn statements through the years, attempted to deflect responsibility for some of those statements on to his staff members and the co-author of his autobiography.

[...]

Earlier in the morning, the judge in the case, U.S. district Judge Murray Snow, directed questions at one of Arpaio's deputies who participated in a 2007 traffic stop.

[...]

Of particular interest to Snow was a statement DiPietro made last week regarding his opinion that most day laborers are in the country illegally. Attorneys for the plaintiffs have long contended that the Sheriff's Office conflates being Hispanic and being a day laborer with being an undocumented immigrant.

Arpaio took the stand shortly after 9:30 a.m. in front of a packed courtroom and complained that he was suffering from a touch of the flu. Arpaio has come down with the same ailment in the past as he prepared to give sworn testimony -- most notably in last year's hearings that resulted in the disbarment of former County Attorney Andrew Thomas...

[...]

Young quickly moved through other statements Arpaio made through the years regarding immigration enforcement, some of which were contained in the sheriff's press releases and others from his 2008 autobiography.

But Arpaio, as he had done in countless depositions and sworn statements through the years, attempted to deflect responsibility for some of those statements on to his staff members and the co-author of his autobiography.

So where are his letters of complaint to the book's editor? Did he write up staffers for infractions, send them off for some sensitivity training to reduce MCSO liabilities? Does he have a paper trail to support these claims? NO.

Racial-profiling trial: Plaintiffs' lawyers rest case

The Sheriff's Office began presenting its case after more than four days of watching lawyers argue that Sheriff Joe Arpaio's deputies intentionally discriminate against Latino residents, using a combination of statistical data, Arpaio's internal-and-external communications and anecdotal evidence to prove their case.

Attorneys for the Sheriff's Office started their defense with testimony from the director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies who is expected to refute data the plaintiffs presented.

In brief testimony before the hearing took a break for lunch, Steven Camarota said nearly 30 percent of the sheriff's traffic stops he inspected did not include the names of drivers, making an assessment of the allegation that the Sheriff's Office discriminates against Latino drivers difficult.

Camarota said his problems with satisfying the county's request to assess the data were compounded by the inadequate records the Sheriff's Office keeps regarding the race and ethnicity of drivers deputies contact.

Hey! You! Get off of my cloud!

Joe Arpaio, the 80-year-old lawman who brands himself "America's toughest sheriff," is smiling like a delighted gnome. Nineteen floors above the blazing Arizona desert, the Phoenix sprawl ripples in the heat as Arpaio cues up the Rolling Stones to welcome a reporter "from that marijuana magazine."

[...[

Arpaio is an unabashed carnival barker. And his antics might be amusing if he weren't also notorious for being not just the toughest but the most corrupt and abusive sheriff in America.As Arizona has become center stage for the debate over illegal immigration and the civil rights of Latinos, Arpaio has sold himself as the symbol of nativist defiance, a modern-day Bull Connor bucking the federal government over immigration policy. As such, he's become the go-to media prop for conservative politicians, from state legislators to presidential candidates, who want to be seen as immigration hard-liners. "I had Michele Bachmann sitting right there," says Arpaio, pointing to my chair. "All these presidential guys coming to see me!"

[...]

His rhetoric and tactics have spread fear in the Latino community in Arizona. "They hate me, the Hispanic community, because they're afraid they're going to be arrested," Arpaio boasted to a TV interviewer in 2009. "And they're all leaving town, so I think we're doing something good, if they're leaving." But the all-consuming focus on immigration has come at a cost: Arpaio is so obsessed with the often illusory crimes of immigrants that he ignored more than 400 cases of sexual abuse he was responsible for investigating, including assaults on children. And it surprised no one that JT Ready, the Arizona white supremacist who shot and killed his girlfriend, her family and himself last May, had attended Arpaio rallies.

[...]

Flanked by Arpaio's two large body men, we pass through a series of jail yards, first for the women (where one of Arpaio's deputies warns me, "Remember that you're a married man – heh heh"), then for the male prisoners, who idle torpidly in the shade. Inside Arpaio's jails, according to the federal lawsuit, guards refer to Latino inmates as "wetbacks," "Mexican bitches," "stupid Mexicans" and "fucking Mexicans." Female prisoners, the suit claims, were forced to sleep in their own menstrual blood; officers refused to respond to the inmates' pleas because they were made in Spanish. Meanwhile, Arpaio's jailers allegedly circulated e-mail images of a Chihuahua in a bathing suit, calling it "a rare photo of a Mexican Navy Seal."

Rolling Stone weighs in on Arpaio...

This story from the Phoenix New Times, which I picked up from Digby's blog, seems to belong here, even though the article doesn't indicate whether the Maricopa County Attorney's Office was assisted by the Sheriff in the atrocity.

A Woman Was Held in Jail Because Authorities Thought She Was Illegal

The story also highlights the importance of affording preclusive effect to state birth records, since many citizens have nothing else they can use to defend against an accusation of alienage.

[two quick edits to improve prose]

Recently, the Maricopa County Attorney's Office alleged Briseira Torres, a shy, 31-year-old single mom from Glendale, was here illegally and that Briseira Torres was not her real name.

She was accused of three counts of forgery, in part because her driver's license had her real name on it, which the MCAO thought was bogus. Following her arrest, she was held without bond in Estrella Jail for 4 1/2 months.

Torres lost her home and car because she couldn't make the payments as she endured Estrella's harsh conditions, lousy food, and detention officers.

Worst of all, she was separated from her 14-year-old daughter, who stayed with Torres' friend Amy Diaz while her mom was behind bars.