Heat City

Federal agents are helping investigate who threw a Molotov cocktail at the house of one of Gov. Jan Brewer’s aides overnight.

Special agent Tom Mangan said investigators with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were at the Peoria home of governor’s spokesman Paul Senseman, whose garage was hit with the explosive while he and his family slept. The attack caused some damage to the garage door but did not set the house on fire.

Mangan declined to speculate on a motive for the attack, which was first reported this afternoon by the Arizona Republic. He referred all other questions to Peoria police, who were also being assisted by the state Department of Public Safety.

Adam Stoddard

Maricopa County detention officer Adam Stoddard should have never been sent to jail for sneaking a document from the confidential files of a defense attorney, the Arizona Court of Appeals ruled today.

A three-judge panel decided [PDF] that, while Stoddard’s actions did break rules of the court, forcing him to spend time behind bars because he refused to hold a news conference and publicly apologize for his actions was too harsh a penalty. The judges sent the case back to the lower court to find a new, lighter punishment for the detention officer.

“We’re happy,” said Stoddard’s attorney, Tom Liddy, after the decision was published. “Ordering a press conference was absurd. We knew it. They knew it.”