Heat City

Deputy Maricopa County attorney Tom Liddy invoked his famous father’s troubled past on Friday when responding to an Arizona Republic reporter’s questions about whether jailed detention officer Adam Stoddard is, in fact, in jail.

Liddy’s father, G. Gordon Liddy, was one of the so-called White House “plumbers” during the Nixon administration. He was convicted of, among other things, contempt of court in the infamous break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate hotel in Washington, D.C. He served four and a half years in prison following the conviction.

Antonio Lozano

So what, exactly, was in the document that Maricopa County detention officer Adam Stoddard took from the confidential files of defense attorney Joanne Cuccia?

At a hearing last month, Stoddard testified he saw the words “going to,” “steal” and “money” grouped together in a single sentence at the bottom of the handwritten page. But beyond that, the public knows very little about it because Superior Court Judge Gary Doanhoe declared the letter a privileged communication between Cuccia and her client, alleged gang member Antonio Lozano. He ordered it sealed so that no one besides the two of them could see it.

But now, Stoddard’s attorney hopes to change all that. In a request filed Monday [PDF] with the judge, deputy county attorney Tom Liddy asked for the whole letter to be made public so he could use it to try to get Stoddard out of jail.

A small group gathers outside Maricopa County’s main courthouse for a vigil to support jailed detention officer Adam Stoddard. Photo by Nick R. Martin

As detention officer Adam Stoddard approached his third full day in jail on Thursday night, a small but dedicated group of supporters gathered in front of Maricopa County’s main courthouse to hold the first of what they hope becomes a nightly vigil until he is freed.

About 20 of his supporters – most were Stoddard’s coworkers in the sheriff’s office and a few were citizens who heard about him on the news – stood in the chilly December air with candles and talked about why they were there.

“We’re a big law enforcement family,” said Luis Altamirano, vice president of the county’s detention officers union. “Our association won’t stand down, and we plan to be here every day.”

The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office released this mugshot of detention officer Adam Stoddard this afternoon, along with his jail booking number: P610370. Still no word on where he is being housed as he continues to be held for taking confidential documents from a defense attorney.

Two more Maricopa County court buildings were evacuated today, one because of a bomb threat and the other because of a cloud of pepper spray, marking another day of chaos in the Valley’s justice system.

At about 10 a.m., a person called authorities to say there was a bomb at a downtown Phoenix building that houses a number of courtrooms handling drunken driving cases, as well as the chambers of several court commissioners. A short time later, someone released pepper spray inside another lower-court building that’s also home to the county Public Defender’s Office.

Sheriff’s deputies believe the bomb threat for the court building at Madison and Central avenues was related to one that cleared out the county’s main court facility less than a block away on Wednesday, causing extra headaches on a day that was already marred by political battles over the case of a jailed detention officer.

It’s been three days since Maricopa County detention office Adam Stoddard was ordered to jail for contempt of court, and the sheriff’s office, which both employs him and supposedly has him in custody, has yet to offer proof he’s behind bars.

Stoddard’s lawyer, deputy county attorney Tom Liddy, said the detention officer surrendered at about 6 p.m. Tuesday. He even told a crowd yesterday that his fellow “brothers and sisters” in the sheriff’s office treated Stoddard “with the utmost respect” as they took him into custody.

But by today, the young officer who was caught on courthouse security video taking confidential documents from a defense attorney still has not shown up in any of the county’s jail records. Additionally, the sheriff’s office has refused to say where he is being held “for his security” and also declined to release a booking photo or inmate number.

To some, at least, it’s enough to question whether Stoddard is really in jail.

Maricopa County Sheriff’s deputy Sean Pearce tells reporters his union is standing behind jailed detention officer Adam Stoddard. Photo by Nick R. Martin

The timing of it all was impeccable.

Some 20 minutes before a group of union members planned to rally in the shadow of Maricopa County’s main courthouse on Wednesday, their colleagues in the sheriff’s office gave the green light to reopen the facility after it had been evacuated for a morning bomb threat.

The result was that the law-enforcement unions got an audience in the hundreds as crowds streamed back into the courthouse for afternoon proceedings. But more importantly, they go a much-larger platform to call on the Superior Court to release an officer jailed for defying a judge’s order.

“We demand that detention officer (Adam) Stoddard be freed and his record cleared,” shouted Luis Altamirano, vice president of the Maricopa County Association of Detention Officers, as the crowd stared and listened.

Three buildings make up the main facilities for the Maricopa County Superior Court.

Maricopa County’s main courthouses in downtown Phoenix have been shut down today as a bomb threat and a possible sickout by detention officers crippled one of the largest justice systems in the nation just a day after a sheriff’s officer was jailed for violating a court order.

A spokesman with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office said 911 dispatchers in Phoenix took a call of a bomb threat at about 10 a.m., and evacuations of the county’s three main Superior Court buildings began quickly after that. Hundreds of people poured out of the buildings, which make up one of the five largest court systems in the nation, and proceedings have been called off for now.

Detention officer Adam Stoddard ignored his attorney’s advice tonight and bunked up in a Maricopa County jail, despite the fact that he cannot yet be booked there.

His attorney, Tom Liddy, said earlier that a clerical error by a judge had prevented the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office from booking one of their own into the jails.

“I told him to go home,” Liddy said. “But he said, no, he wanted to stay because that’s what the judge ordered.”

He showed up for jail and left just as quickly.

The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office says it is unable to book one of its own, detention officer Adam Stoddard, into jail tonight because of a supposed clerical error.

Stoddard apparently surrendered to the custody of his own agency in the past hour, but according to his attorney, the sheriff’s office told him it could not book him because of some sort of error with the paperwork from the judge who sent him there.

“The judge screwed up the order of confinement,” said deputy county attorney Tom Liddy.