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.
A Maricopa County justice of the peace said Monday that a defendant who was arrested last year for clapping during a public meeting was “objectively accurate” when she called the deputy arresting her a “fascist.”
In a ruling published yesterday (PDF), Justice of the Peace Steven McMurry slammed the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office for the incident in which five local activists were arrested and eventually charged with disrupting a Dec. 17, 2008 meeting of the county Board of Supervisors.
He was supposed to go to jail today, but Maricopa County detention officer Adam Stoddard is on the job instead, working in a courtroom just two floors above the judge whose orders he publicly defied Monday night.
Public defender Maria Schaffer said an attorney in her office spotted Stoddard in uniform, guarding the seventh-floor courtroom of Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Lisa Flores this morning. “He was there,” said Schaffer.
About 12 hours before he returned to the job, Stoddard stood outside the same courthouse and told a pack of journalists he would not obey an order by Judge Gary Donahoe to apologize for rifling through an attorney’s confidential files and seizing a letter from a defendant. The Oct. 19 incident took place in Flores’ courtroom, no less.
Stoddard told reporters he would rather go to jail than apologize.
Watch 3TV’s report, which includes the full statement from detention officer Stoddard.
He did almost everything he was supposed to do. He gathered the area’s media. He prepared a statement. He read it aloud.
But detention officer Adam Stoddard did not apologize on Monday night. Instead, he defied the order issued by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Gary Donahoe, which required him to say he was sorry for taking an attorney’s confidential documents six weeks ago or else go to jail today.
“Judge Donahoe has ordered me to feel something I do not” Stoddard said. “He has ordered me to say something I cannot.”
The young detention officer, dressed in his brown duty uniform and wearing a badge, told the pack of journalists and other observers in front of the county’s main courthouse in downtown Phoenix that the judge had essentially “put me in a position where I must lie or go to jail.”
“I will not lie,” he said.
Detention officer Adam Stoddard has called an 8:30 p.m. news conference on the plaza of Maricopa County’s main courthouse, his attorney tells Heat City. However, the attorney played coy when asked whether an apology is in the offing.
“You’ll have to come to find out,” said deputy county attorney Tom Liddy.
When Liddy was asked whether he stood by his previous statements that Stoddard would not apologize, he said: “Everything I’ve said to you is always correct. You know that.”
As you probably have heard by now, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is scheduled to speak tonight at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism. Protests are planned from both sides of the aisle, and the event is sure to be heavily covered by the media.
I’ll be there taking notes, and probably posting some things on Twitter. But for live coverage of the event, your best bet is PHXated, a blog run by journalist Bill Wyman. He’s been covering the lead-up to the event and has done a more-thorough job than anyone.
The event also happens to fall on the same day Arpaio’s office is squaring off with a judge over whether a detention officer should apologize for taking an attorney’s legal file. I’ll update Heat City on the latest events as that situation continues to unfold.
Judge Gary Donahoe
Judge Gary Donahoe is holding firm on his order that a Maricopa County detention officer must apologize by the end of the day today for taking an attorney’s confidential files or else face jail time.
Donahoe this afternoon denied a request by attorneys for the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office to push back the deadline. The ruling has not yet been made public, but a woman who answered the phone at Donahoe’s office as well as attorney for the sheriff both confirmed it.
Asked what the sheriff’s office planned to do next, deputy county attorney Tom Liddy said he was too busy to discuss it, but, he added, “Be on the lookout for something in a couple hours.”
Joe Arpaio
An all-out showdown could be in the works today over whether one of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s officers will apologize for taking an attorney’s confidential files.
It all goes back to an Oct. 19 incident in which Maricopa County detention officer Adam Stoddard was caught on a courtroom security video swiping a document from the files of a defense attorney while her back was turned.
Superior Court Judget Gary Donahoe has since ordered the detention officer to hold a news conference to apologize for taking the document. If he refuses to do so by the deadline – set for today – Donahoe said he would throw the officer in jail for contempt of court.
On Sunday, an attorney for the sheriff’s office told Heat City there is still no apology in the works today. But deputy county attorney Tom Liddy also said Arpaio’s office is considering “an announcement” instead.
He declined to say what the announcement might be, but added: “There are over a thousand possibilities.”
“It should not be read by you or anyone else that he’s going to apologize,” Liddy said.
Julie Moreno
A deal is in the works to sell the East Valley Tribune and keep the Pultizer Prize-winning newspaper alive after the New Year, according to two sources familiar with conversations within the company.
Publisher Julie Moreno told reporters and editors during a conference call at 1 p.m. today that the parent company, Freedom Communications, has received a “letter of intent” to purchase the printing press and keep a significant number of employees, the sources said.
The Tribune also posted news of the potential deal on its website this afternoon.
Moreno would not name the potential buyer, telling employees only that the deal has “developed very quickly” and that “Freedom considers it serious and is supportive of it,” said one of the sources.
Moreno was at Freedom’s headquarters in Irvine, Calif., when the call took place, both sources said. Taking questions from reporters, she declined to say whether the buyer was an individual, a group of investors or another media company.
Moreno also said it is possible the Tribune’s downtown Mesa building – a property assessed at close to $7 million – will not be part of the deal.
Mark McEachen
One of the top executives of California media giant Freedom Communications told employees of the East Valley Tribune today that the newspaper’s pending demise could be “a good marketing tool” to try to sell it at the last minute.
Chief financial officer Mark McEachen made the comments in a conference call with Freedom’s employees company-wide. They were posted on the Tribune’s website late this afternoon.
But the executive also warned employees not the get their hopes up, saying: “We remain on track to close by the end of the year,”according to the web posting.
McEachen also confirmed rumors that someone made an offer to buy the Mesa newspaper before Freedom declared bankruptcy on Sept. 1. Freedom didn’t bite, though, because the unnamed person wanted the company to pay him to take over the business, McEachen said. The posting offered no other details of the offer.