Maricopa County’s death-penalty system is plagued by “overzealous” prosecutors and creates a high number of questionable death-penalty cases, according to a new Harvard Law School report. “Too Broken to Fix: Part I: An In-Depth Look at America’s Outlier Death Penalty Counties,” by the school’s Fair Punishment Project, identifies Maricopa as one of…
A Mesa police supervisor was facing termination before he retired last week following his recent conviction for super-extreme DUI, a police spokesman says. Richard “Rick” Van Galder, who had more than 20 years on the force, was stopped in February with his wife, Teresa, a Mesa PD homicide detective, as…
An employee of the Grand Canyon Lodge at the North Rim faces a detention hearing this morning on a charge that he choked and raped another employee after a dorm party. Jeremy Ean Bird has been held in detention since his August 11 arrest in connection with the assault, which…
New evidence shows that a few weeks before a teenager held in solitary confinement at Perryville Prison died in what appears to be an act of suicide, the Arizona Department of Corrections had been specifically warned about her deteriorating mental health and notified that the conditions in which she was…
An inmate who raped a teacher at an Arizona state prison in 2014 may be forced to pay her $10 million — in the unlikely event that he gets out of prison and/or inherits a boatloads of cash. A federal magistrate made the recommendation earlier this month after Jacob Harvey, 22,…
An Arizona woman charged with receiving infant porn said on Monday that it was her teen daughter, not her, who was in communication with a Colorado child-porn suspect. Sarah Cox, 39, of Clarkdale, was charged last week with three counts of knowingly receiving child pornography. As a New Times article…
An Arizona woman has been caught up in the federal investigation into an alleged child pornographer in Colorado. On August 4, authorities charged 39-year-old Sarah Cox of Clarkdale with three counts of knowingly receiving child pornography. The complaint, filed in Arizona U.S. District Court by Homeland Security Investigations, alleges that Cox and Richard Hennis…
The Mesa Police Department has released findings from a months-long project on community engagement, just in time to buoy public confidence in the agency. With one of its officers facing trial for the January 18 killing of an unarmed man, the agency is looking ahead. On Tuesday, in a conference…
Newly released body-cam video (embedded below) shows Loreal Tsingine brandishing a pair of scissors at Officer Austin Shipley of the Winslow Police Department before he shot her during a confrontation outside a Circle K store on Easter Sunday. The police department has edited the actual shooting out of the March 27 clip. It…
Despite the threat of a lawsuit and allegations that its investigators tried to frame an innocent man, the Arizona Department of Public Safety continues to try to link Phoenix landscaper Leslie Merritt Jr. to four shootings in 2015 on the I-10 freeway. Court documents recently unsealed by superior court Judge…
It has been 15 years since Robert Fisher allegedly butchered his wife and two children before blowing up the family’s Scottsdale home. After more than a decade on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list, Fisher has yet to be apprehended. But the 15-year anniversary, coupled with recent media coverage, has fueled…
In 2012, Rebekah Mellon, a 31-year-old mother of one, was charged with the first-degree murder of her husband, who was found shot to death in the family’s Phoenix home. In a bizarre twist, the shooting was recorded on video, thanks to the family’s indoor surveillance system. When the case goes to…
When it comes to orchestrating a civil rights-themed public spectacle in Phoenix, the Reverend Jarrett Maupin cannot be beat. Billed as a protest of police brutality, the event that took place Friday at 24th Street and Camelback Road in the city’s tony Biltmore area lacked the spontaneity, the fear and…
Andy Barrios, the driver in a 2015 Christmas-night car crash that killed three men, including popular Phoenix rapper Jose “Low Key” Hernandez, failed to make a July 1 initial appearance in Phoenix municipal court for the low-level misdemeanor he faces stemming from the fatal collision. As a result, the court…
Ex-Minuteman and anti-immigrant vigilante Chris Simcox declined to speak on his own behalf during his sentencing today in a Phoenix courtroom. “I have nothing to say, Your Honor,” the former kindergarten teacher said, as he stood before Judge Jose Padilla. He was dressed in stripes with his wrists handcuffed in…
Anger and activism met with the blunt reality police force on the streets of Phoenix on Friday night in a dramatic, hours-long confrontation filled with tear gas, pepper spray, and pepperballs. New Times was, at times, at the heart of the action that stretched into early Saturday along Seventh Street…
A Phoenix driver who allegedly killed three men, including popular local rapper José “Low Key” Hernandez, in an auto crash last year, may wind up serving no more than a month in jail if he’s convicted, despite having admitted to drinking the night of the accident and to running a…
Visit sunny Arizona, stay for seven to ten, behind bars. That could be the Arizona Chamber of Commerce’s new slogan for the state, based on a recent analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, which shows that from 2006 to 2014, Arizona’s incarceration…
Federal authorities have charged a Phoenix police officer and his cousin for setting off a wildfire near the ghost town of Cleator while target shooting with tracer ammunition. Tom Sario, who has worked as a Phoenix officer for nine years, “is currently working on a non-enforcement position,” says Sergeant Jonathan…
Ex-border vigilante Chris Simcox’s name now can be added to the list of infamous criminals to emerge from the Minuteman movement. On Wednesday, after deliberating for a day and a half, a Phoenix jury found the onetime anti-immigrant firebrand guilty on two counts of child molestation and one count of…
Monday morning, during the last day of ex-border vigilante Chris Simcox’s trial in Phoenix on six felony counts related to child molestation and exposing minors to porn, a video of one of his alleged victims dealt serious damage to Simcox’s cause when the prosecution played it in court. Simcox, who…
A Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community police officer has resigned following accusations that he sexually abused a woman in his squad car. On May 26, Scottsdale police arrested 45-year-old Jay Wu, a decorated Salt River officer who’d been with the department for 10 years. He was released him on his…
