For the second time, current Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has requested United States District Court Judge G. Murray Snow recuse himself as judge from the ongoing Melendres, et.al. v. Arpaio, et.al. civil class action racial profiling case. Arpaio and his Washington, DC-based legal team list the judge’s communicating with the independent monitor he appointed to oversee implementation and compliance with the judge’s orders in the Melendres case as the reason for the recusal. As the word intimates, recusal is a legal term of art wherein a judge is removed as presiding judge of a matter because of a conflict of interest or lack of impartiality. Arpaio is also seeking removal of the independent monitor.
Arpaio made the same objection in 2015 for the same reason; the objection was overruled by the judge who stated he found it impossible to supervise the independent monitor without communicating with him.
The Melendres case began in 2007, and in 2011 Arpaio and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office was ordered to cease targeting and illegally detaining drivers based solely on ethnicity in an attempt to enforce federal immigration policies, including holding well-publicized “immigration patrols”. In 2013 Arpaio was found to have repeatedly and intentionally disregarded the judge’s orders, for more than 18 months, engaging in “multiple acts of misconduct, dishonesty, and bad faith”. More recently an independent monitor was appointed to enforce the court’s orders, and last week Arpaio was charged with a count of criminal misdemeanor contempt.
This case is estimated to have cost Maricopa County and its taxpayers nearly $50 million dollars to date, and it appears far from finished.
For more on this story, see the New Times article below:
Gordon Thompson
