Detention officer will report to jail tonight, says sheriff's office (updated)

By Nick R. Martin | December 1st, 2009 | 4:37 pm | 5 Comments »

Maricopa County detention officer Adam Stoddard will surrender to jail tonight ahead of his midnight deadline to do so, a spokeswoman with the sheriff’s office confirmed.

Spokeswoman Lisa Allen said in an email that Stoddard will be housed in one of the county jails, but she declined to name which one “for his security.” Whatever the location, though, the move guarantees he will be put up in a jail run by the agency he works for.

During a news conference last night, Stoddard said he was refusing to obey a judge’s order to apologize for taking a confidential document from an attorney’s files in full view of courtroom security cameras on Oct. 19. He said he would not “publicly apologize for doing the job I’ve been trained to do.”

Under the court order, Stoddard is supposed to surrender to the jails before midnight tonight because he did not meet yesterday’s deadline to apologize.

Stoddard’s lawyer, deputy county attorney Tom Liddy, declined to comment about the surrender.

Update (7:34 p.m.): Stoddard apparently surrendered to the jail tonight, but the sheriff’s office turned him away because of a supposed clerical error. But even before that happened, Sheriff Joe Arpaio made some pretty strong comments about the judge, according to the Phoenix New Times:

Arpaio claims Donahoe has a “vendetta” against him and will soon release information about the judge that proves it. “For political reasons, [Stoddard’s] been thrown to the wolves,” Arpaio said.

What’s the vendetta? Arpaio didn’t say. But he made the remarks at a news conference announcing a major federal lawsuit that accuses the county’s judges, among others, of engaging in a vast, ongoing conspiracy against him and the county attorney.