A Declaration of Independence?

Sometimes the updates come almost faster than you can type them.

My subject is the Harris County Grand Jury and its investigation of the Houston Police Department batmobiles and of, it seems, the Harris County District Attorney.  Monday I wrote this laying out the basic plot and admiring the fact that the grand jury was standing up and doing its job.  A couple of hours ago, I posted this, considering that oak trees grow from acorns (not the metaphor I used and I found a much better youtube clip than one of a tree growing, but it's serviceable here).

Now, with a nod and a tip of the hat to the vigilant Paul Kennedy.

It's confirmed.  The grand jury in Houston is in fact investigating possible criminal conduct in the office of the Harris County District Attorney.  That's not exactly manning the barricades, but it's not being the silent majority, either.  It's not what grand juries do in this carefully choreographed system.

The Harris County Grand Jury asked today to extend their term beyond its scheduled expiration date at the beginning of November.  And they asked Judge Susan Brown of the 185th District Court, the judge who empaneled them, to appoint a special prosecutor to assist them.  In fact, she appointed two.  (I gather that she hasn't yet ruled on the grand jury's request to extend their term.)

Here's Anita Hassan at the Houston Chronicle.

Brown's order was the first official sign that the grand jury was setting its sights on the DA's office.
"After considering the grand jury's request and the applicable law, the court finds the Harris County District Attorney and her office are disqualified from participating in the grand jury's investigation of possible criminal conduct by members of the Harris County District Attorney's Office," Brown wrote.
The grand jurors did not divulge details of possible misconduct by prosecutors, Brown's order said.

If someone has a copy of the judge's order, and wants to send it to me, I'll be happy to post it.

Runaway grand juries don't get that way by chance. I don't know where this will wind up.  What I do know is that when the people start to take back their government, it can be hard to stop them.

The Tea Party knows that.  The Occupy Everywhere folks know that.  And maybe they know it in the Harris County Grand Jury.

Rockslide?

Sometime around January 25, a bunch of folks gathered in Tahrir Square in Cairo.  Sometime after that, Hosni Mubarak gave up the presidency to be hauled away (at least metaphorically) in chains.

Sometime around September 17 a bunch of folks began to set up an encampment in Zuccotti Park.  Occupy Wall Street, they said.  Sometime after that, from city to city, from nation to nation, people were occupying.

Sometime around last week, a grand jury in Houston kicked out the prosecutors, threatened to have them arrested when they wouldn't leave.  Sometime after that (as in within hours and then maybe a day), the courts backed them up.

I haven't written about Zuccotti Park, though it was quite something the day I was there.  I haven't written about Egypt, either.  But I wrote about the lawyers who gathered in Phoenix.  (Look it up.)  And I wrote about that feisty grand jury in Houston (here).  And I quoted Paul Kennedy .

It stands to reason that the grand jurors are taking a hard look at the conduct of the DA's office in this entire sordid affair. Maybe someone gets indicted. Maybe (probably) not. 

Sometimes, not always, but sometimes, what "stands to reason" actually appears to be so.  This is one of those times.  From the Houston Chronicle via Kennedy.

A Harris County grand jury investigating how the Houston Police Department and the Harris County District Attorney handled potentially bad DWI evidence subpoenaed four Assistant District Attorneys as part of its ongoing investigation, KTRK-TV (Channel 13) is reporting:

The four are all prosecutors who handled DWI cases since the BAT vans were used.
The grand jury proceedings are secret, but our legal analyst Joel Androphy says it is clear to him grand jurors are trying to figure out when the DA’s Office knew about BAT van maintenance issues and what they did with the information.

When did Pat Lykos know and what did she do about it?  Yeah, those are the smoking guns questions.  Was her office consciously prosecuting people when they knew the evidence was tainted or were they doing it unconsciously?  Were they actively hiding exculpatory evidence or simply refusing to see it?  (Either way, they violated the Constitution, I should add.)   How much is malice and how much is incompetence?

And who's going to get shafted?

She says she no longer trust the Houston PD to tell the truth about DUI tests.  Mark Bennett asked

[t]he obvious followup question: well, Ms. Lykos, if you don’t trust HPD to tell you the truth about DWI testing, why do you trust HPD to tell you the truth about anything?

Maybe that's really what the grand jury wants to know.  And if it's not what they're after now, maybe it will be as their investigation continues.

Because once you start that pebble rolling downhill . . . .  Oh, sure.  Sometimes it stops.  It bumps into a little rock and that's the end.

But sometimes

And then you can get the Rule of Law.

The Voice of the People

The idea was that the grand jury was a group of independent citizens who would investigate and decide whether there was enough evidence (probable cause) to charge someone with a crime.  That's an oversimplification, of course, but it gets at the general idea.  The grand jury was designed to protect people from overzealous prosecution.  And, not incidentally, because it had the power to subpoena and question witnesses, the grand jury was able to investigate and root out government corruption and misconduct.

That was then.  Before prosecutors began running grand juries.

Nowadays, as Sol Wachtler is credited with saying, a competent prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.  When a grand jury refuses to return an indictment, it's mostly because the prosecutor made sure that they wouldn't have the evidence or wouldn't take it seriously. Because the details of what happens in a grand jury are generally secret, the prosecutor who doesn't want to pursue a case but knows the community wants him to can announce that he's bringing it before the grand jury but ensure that his crony the accused will never actually face charges.

The point, and so far I haven't really made one, is that the function of the grand jury today is simply not what it was.  Rather than protecting the people from the government, today's grand jury has become a weapon that the government uses against the people.

Except sometimes.

Come with me now to the Lone Star State.  Specifically Harris County (which is Houston) where someone (and quite clearly not a representative of District Attorney Pat Lykos's office) seems to have told a grand jury that it's not just the prosecutor's tool.

Here, and I'm going to try to make this short and simple, is the backstory. 

In 2008, in an effort to increase drunk driving arrests keep the roads safer, the Houston PD acquired a set of vans equipped with breath testing gear.  They have the clumsy moniker "Breath-alcohol testing vehicles.  Naturally, that's commonly reduced to the acronym BAT.  Paul Kennedy calls them Batmobiles.  (And I was going to keep this short and simple?)

So there are these Batmobiles (Kennedy just stole my distinction between the Rule of Law and the Law or Rule, so I'm taking his term) and to the surprise of nobody except the cops and the DA's office it turns out that their breath testing technology is wholly unreliable.  Naturally, the cops and the DA's office tried to bury that fact.  But damned if Amanda Culbertson didn't have a bout of integrity.  Anita Hassan, writing in the Houston Chronicle, explains.

Beginning last fall, then-HPD crime lab supervisorAmanda Culbertson and two other lab supervisors at the time informed HPD officials on several occasions that they found electrical and maintenance problems with the breath-alcohol testing vehicles, also known as BAT vans, causing the testing instruments to overheat. Culbertson and the emails state that despite many notifications to HPD officials, the problems with vehicles persisted.

. . .

In recent months at least two defense attorneys say evidence in DWI cases they are handling could have been compromised because of problems with the BAT vans. Another defense attorney estimates his firm has about 20 cases that could be affected.

The crime lab supervisors told HPD superiors that problems with the BAT vans needed to be corrected to maintain the scientific integrity of the breath-testing instruments.

Culbertson also said she received push back from HPD officials when she tried to reprimand breath test operators for not properly maintaining the vehicles and received little support from her own supervisor, HPD crime lab director Irma Rios.

"There were problems with those vans, and they (HPD) weren't fixing the vans," Culbertson told the Chronicle. She testified during a court hearing in July that she quit her job because she no longer felt she could trust the accuracy of test results from BAT vans.

So, Culbertson blew the whistle internally, and then told the truth on the witness stand. She left HPD and went to work supervising breath testing at a county lab, going public about the whole thing.

And then things got first ugly, then interesting.  From Life at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center:

Lykos is having her prosecutors present a case to the Grand Jury involving the B.A.T. vans and Amanda Culbertson. That Grand Jury was created by the 185th District Court, Judge Susan Brown presiding. Grand Jury proceedings are secret, so we don't know what exactly has been presented to the Grand Jury so far.

But on October 18th, the Harris County District Attorney's Office vendetta against Amanda Culbertson blew up in their face.

On that day, prosecutors Carl Hobbs, Steve Morris (from Governmental Integrity), and John Barnhill all marched down to the 185th Grand Jury with the intent of calling defense attorney (and former-prosecutor) Brent Mayr as a witness before the grand jurors. Brent Mayr, if you will recall from my earlier post, is the attorney who filed a Writ against the D.A.'s Office for withholding evidence of B.A.T. van reliability issues.

Upon arrival at the Grand Jury, however, Hobbs, Morris, and Barnhill were suddenly informed by the Grand Jury bailiffs that the Grand Jurors wanted them (the prosecutors) excluded from the room while Mayr was testifying.

"But . . . but . . . but . . . but," you can imagine the prosecutors sputtering.

But we own the grand jury.  They're ours. They can't make us leave.

Except they did.  Threatening the trio with arrest if they tried to stay.

Why would the grand jury do that?  Really, there can only be one reason.  They wanted to know why the DA's office was going after Culbertson for having the gall to tell the truth on the witness stand.
And they wanted Brent Mayr to feel free to answer their questions without concern about what the DA's minions might overhear, without intimidation.

Kennedy explains.

It stands to reason that the grand jurors are taking a hard look at the conduct of the DA's office in this entire sordid affair. Maybe someone gets indicted. Maybe (probably) not. But, I think it reasonable to assume that the grand jury is not going to indict Ms. Culbertson on some trumped up charge of telling the truth on the witness stand even thought it makes it harder for the state to prosecute motorists for driving while intoxicated.

Which make this what's known (really) as a "runaway jury."

If only it had stopped there.

But now came DA Lykos, in her commitment to ensuring a fair grand jury investigation (i.e., one her office controls).  The prosecutors asked Susan Brown, judge of the 185th District Court, the judge who empaneled that grand jury, to order them to let them back in.  Nope.

And so they went to the court of appeals.

Which told them to pound sand.

Lykos Mandamus

Now, honestly, the odds that the grand jury is actually going to try indicting Lykos or anyone from her office or anyone from HPD are very slim.  But right now that's almost an irrelevance.

What the grand jury has done is to justify its existence.  It's acknowledged a right to speak truth to power, to stand up for the people against the government.

I'm not sure whether they're Tea Bagging or Occupying the Justice Center (or a little of both), but they're standing up.  Doing what they were designed to do.

It's something to behold.

And maybe, just maybe, the powers will take note.

Because Anger Isn't Enough

And because there's enough danger to go around.

As he usually does, Scott Greenfield hits the target in the right places.

Lawyers on Strike, the new blog I wrote about here, is written by an anonymous person claiming to be a lawyer.  (It's the internet, without more information on him/her than the pen name Atticus - which Scott points out is "the name commonly adopted by the self-righteous as the keeper of Justice" and that Atticus Finch would not hide from the fray but put himself on the line - the author could be a lawyer or a fishmonger or the Fuller Brush Man, if there are still Fuller Brush Men, or a rocket scientist working for NASA.)  The author plans to identify (by undisclosed and perhaps permanently secret criteria) particularly evil judges and then call on all members of the bar to join in a strike against them.  Presumably the idea is that this would force them off the bench.

I said that it's difficult to imagine how that would work.  I can't, after all, refuse to pursue my case just because it's in front of a judge I don't like.  Aside from the whole contempt of court thing, and the ethical violation bit, there's the fact that my client suffers.  Scott notes all of that, adds that criminal defense lawyers aren't good at collective action (he actually references "feral cats") and adds the point about what's good for the gander.

If we can influence the bench this way, so too can the prosecution.  What would happen if the prosecution refuses to appear before judges who are, in their opinion, too favorable to the defense?  And get real about it, as the prosecution is invariably better capable of concerted action than the defense, as they hold the purse strings over their line.

As I say, he's right about all that.

Ah, but the frustration.  And the yen to call the question, to make a difference.

A few weeks ago, I attended a program put on by the New York Times at which Daniel Ellsberg and Max Frankel spoke about the Pentagon Papers and how Ellsberg got them to the Times and negotiated their publication and what the Times did and how.  All this while the Wikileaks releases from Afghanistan and their echos were still on the front pages.  Also there, not on the stage, but introduced - as specially invited members of the audience - were Frank Serpico and others less known by name but who also put themselves on the line, at great personal and professional risk, to expose broad and deep abuses of the public trust.

Listening to Ellsberg and Frankel, just being in the room with them and the others, was a reminder of what people can do when they act.  (And Ellsberg went after his hosts for not displaying the same degree of willingness to expose itself in order to expose truth as it had those decades ago.)

Right.

I'm no starry-eyed dreamer.  I'm not naive enough to believe that just because this Atticus wants to take on the system that it will be possible.  Or that this Atticus will make wise choices.  Or that it wouldn't have unintended and horrific consequences so that our clients would suffer more than they do now.

Every plan I've heard over the years for criminal defense lawyers to take collective action in court - most commonly involving refusals to waive time or to resolve any case without trial - is doomed to failure because it can't be done without sacrificing the clients who would benefit from waiving time or taking a deal, or who just want to do it because dammit, that's what they want.

I think this is no different.

But Atticus is angry.  And looking for a way.  It's more than most of us do.  As I said, it's worth keeping an eye on.  Hey, if he (?) can figure something out . . . .

Then again, Tim McVeigh was angry, too.  And he figured something out.

Of course, he was wrong about more than just how he expressed that anger.

And We're Not Going To Take It Anymore

There's a lawyer I know, a public defender, let's call him Mike.  Whenever I see him, Mike complains about the idiot and offensive things the judges in his rural, conservative county do.  He just can't believe how consistently they ignore well-established legal principles, ignore binding precedent, ignore the Supreme Court.  He shakes his head in sadness and bafflement.

Year after year, as he keeps fighting and struggling against those judges he asks me (I'm a lot older and have been doing it a lot longer) the same question.

I get so tired of it.  How do you keep going, keep fighting it?

And year after year, as he asks me roughly the same question, I give him roughly the same answer.

You get tired, but you keep going because you hold onto the hope.  I get tired but keep going because I hold onto the anger.

The system makes me angry.  It's the dishonest cops and the corrupt ones and the violent ones and the blue wall of silence that protects them, even coddles them.  It's the prosecutors who sign off on the snitches and the testilying, who hide the evidence and twist it.  And it's the law professors who pretend or sometimes even believe that the police and the prosecutors will act on what the courts say and better their behavior because, well, that's the law.

And it's the bankers and the oil company executives and the heads of the Fortune 500 and the doctors and the lawyers and the indian chiefs (but not the indians who aren't chiefs) who think and are dammit right that our country runs for them.  Because Calvin Coolidge was, sadly, maybe right when he said that "the business of America is business" even if Charles Erwin Wilson wouldn't have been exactly right had he actually said that "What's good for General Motors is good for the country."

And it's the media.  Not just Fox but the more seemingly neutral networks and even the MSNBC's and the New York Times and Washington Post.  Left, right, or center, they're all playing from similar scripts.  Oh, juggle a bit, but nobody's seriously talking about holding government accountable for the outrages.  Want an example?  Take a look at what happened to Helen Thomas when she dared to express a private opinion about Israel and the Palestinians. As she said,

I hit the third rail. You cannot criticize Israel in this country and survive.

No more than you can publicly say, even as a private opinion, that US policy is part of what inspires terrorists to attack us.  Of course it is.  That's not a criticism of US policy (which is not to say that US policy is good, just that the particular statement is not a criticism of it).  Nor is it a statement that the terrorists have a point.  But what the hell is wrong with acknowledging that they don't attack countries that they like?  Might it not make some sense to try understanding what motivates those who would destroy us?

And god knows it's the judges who enable so much of all that as they craft out of whole cloth things like sovereign immunity which, as Norm Pattis pointed out the other day in reviewing Erwin Chemerinsky's new book, has no place in a Lincolnian system of "government of the people, by the people, and for the people."  

Norm wrote of, and quoting, Erwin,

I was encouraged to read him take aim at sovereign immunity, the bizarre notion that in this republic of ours government is somehow beyond the reach of ordinary justice: "A doctrine derived from the premise `the king can do no wrong' deserves no place in American law. The United States was founded on rejection of monarchy and royal prerogative. American government is based on the fundamental recognition that the government and government officials can do wrong and must be held accountable. Sovereign immunity undermines that basic notion."  Amen, I say.

And as the Courts made up sovereign immunity, so they made up qualified immunity.  Here's Norm again from the same post, the next paragraph, in fact.

Oddly, Chemerinsky writes about sovereign immunity but neglects mention of an even more potent tool in the conservative arsenal of weapons used to keep ordinary people out of court, qualified immunity. This most obvious tool of judicial activism gives the benefit of the doubt to government actors in close cases and accounts for more dismissals prior to trial than any other legal doctrine. By way of example, the Practicing Law Institute in New York each year published a two-volume practice aid on litigation arising under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983, a federal statute that permits ordinary people to sue government actors for violating a person's federal rights. Fifteen years ago, one small chapter in the second volume of the aid was devoted to qualified immunity. The second volume of last year's aid was devoted to qualified immunity cases, and was more than 1,000 pages long. Just where did this doctrine come from? No one claims he framers intended it; no statute was passed by Congress to limit these claims. No, conservative judges cooked it up, and when they did, no one complained it was due to activism. I wanted to hear Chemerinsky's take on this doctrine. Strangely, the book is silent on the topic.

Because it's about power and the powerless and despite those nice words about "We the people," the framers didn't think women qualified or men who didn't own land or Native Americans or, slaves who didn't even qualify as full persons, let alone some of the "People" of, by, and for whom this union was formed.

So I get up in the morning to fight against it with the weapons I have - words and what passes for law. It's what we do, we in the criminal defense business.  It's what civil rights lawyers do.  It's what civil liberties lawyers do.  And, frankly, we mostly don't accomplish all that much.  We're sticking fingers in leaking dikes, patching the levees.  There are wins, big ones sometimes where we don't just hold our own or push back a little but make real progress.  But mostly we're fighting rear guard actions.

We talk from time to time about shaking the system up.  We cheer when a group of lawyers in Maricopa actually did stand up to Joe 'n' Andy one day. We go to court and plug away.

Like I say, it's what we do.

And now there's Lawyers on Strike.  A new blog, a new voice.  Urging more.

This [blog] will attack the problem at its root: judges. Judges favor the government in criminal cases. They favor insurance companies and banks – and the government again – in civil cases. Put simply, they favor the more powerful litigants and their attorneys over the weaker litigants and their attorneys. More simply yet, they are the ultimate apologists for the establishment and the status quo, precisely because their whole publicly perceived raison d’etre is the opposite.
So, what to do? Personally, I’ve had enough complaining, especially when it comes from lawyers. We are players in the system; if it’s broken, it’s at least partly our fault.
I propose to field reports (anonymity protected) from criminal defense lawyers and other disfavored litigants’ attorneys from anywhere in the United States concerning outrageous judicial conduct – not the kind that makes it into the mainstream press, like personal or sexual misconduct, but the routine, everyday dishonest, biased decision making that hurts those attorneys and their clients, resulting in wrongful convictions or other forms of justice denied.
Then, based upon criteria that I may or may not divulge in the future, I will decide if any of those reports justify a boycott of the judge involved by other criminal defense and/or independent attorneys.
Then I will use this blog to call for a “strike”: that is, to call upon all attorneys in the geographic area to refuse to appear in front of that judge.

It's a little difficult to see how it could work.  I don't like Judge X so when my case is assigned to him I'll refuse to litigate it?   I don't know.

But I appreciate the chutzpah.  And the balls.  And maybe the blogger has an idea of how to do it.

Not going on the blogroll just now, but worth keeping an eye on.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
by Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

h/t Mike Cernovich at Crime & Federalism

Speaking Out Under the Spacious Skies

There was a crowd. 250 or 300 or 350 strong. Mostly lawyers.

They carried signs:

RULE OF LAW!
RULE OF LAW!

FREE JUDGES
FREE PEOPLE

They read aloud the oath they took as members of the bar,

I will not counsel or maintain any suit or proceeding that shall appear to me to be without merit or to be unjust.

They heard short speeches.

Tom Ryan, a self-described Republican and lifelong conservative who said he is not a criminal defense lawyer spoke first:

Andrew Thomas is a bully and a coward," Ryan said, to cheers from the phalanx of lawyers, "who, when he does not get his way, abuses the awesome power of the county attorney in a misguided and unethical attempt to get his own way.

Another lawyer, Shawn Aiken, posed the issue that's been driving the blawgers crazy.

All of us have been asking our friends and neighbors, "Where is the outrage?"

Robert J. McWhirter, who is a criminal defense lawyer, said it plainly:

On behalf of the criminal defense lawyers, all I can say is, "It's about time."

Then they sang, all of those lawyers in suits and a smattering of others. It wasn't the 60s. These weren't a bunch of radicals and hippies. No "We Shall Overcome" or "Blowin' in the Wind" for them. They sang "America the Beautiful."

And it must have been.

The question, the serious one, is what happens next.

According to KPHO,

The attorneys who organized Monday's rally say they intend to campaign statewide against Thomas if he runs for Attorney General and work with the State Bar of Arizona if any action is brought against the prosecutor.

But are they filing complaints with the bar? Will there be real follow-up?

Today's was a big step. But you have to keep going to bring down the giant.

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife.
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!

------------------
NOTE: Most of this was drawn from the report by Sarah Fenske & Paul Rubin at New Times. New Times also has a slide show that's worth a look.

And It Begins Here

They're fighting back.

Sarah Fenske of New Times reports that defense attorneys are filing motions asking that County Attorney Andy Thomas and his whole office be disqualified from handling criminal prosecutions. It's a consequence of bringing civil RICO actions against a few judges and bringing ciminal charges against another. Fenske cuts to the chase:

Will they worry that if they rule against Thomas, they'll be charged criminally, too? Will they placate the crazy county attorney just to stay out of the limelight?

Attorney Richard Gaxiola, apparently the first to file one of these motions, put it this way.

Clearly, the appropriate procedure is to disqualify the MCAO from any further prosecution and allow the federal complaint and [charges against Donahoe] to run their legal course. This would ensure the reinstatement of the public's trust in our judiciary and Arizona criminal justice system.

The motions seem to be getting at least some traction.

On a Wednesday, according to court transcripts obtained by New Times, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge John Hanna put it on the record in every case he heard that some court staff had been visited at their homes by sheriff's deputies. He also made note of the motion that Gaxiola had filed to disqualify the County Attorney's Office in an unrelated case.

"The record should reflect that the court is going to hold a hearing on this motion, and the result of this motion may affect cases that the court hears," Hanna said, according to the transcript.

"Obviously, that motion is not before the Court in any of these cases that are being heard today, so we'll just have to let that litigation take its course.

"But I want everybody to know that it's possible that the continued ability of the Maricopa County Attorney's Office to represent the state in criminal cases, at least in this court, may be -- may well be at issue."

To which Fenske added her own comment:

Damn!

As the Wasilaw Wonder might say, "You betcha."

Meanwhile, Monday is the rally. Here's the press release:

(Phoenix, Arizona) On Monday, December 21, 2009 at 12:15 p.m. concerned lawyers from Maricopa County will hold a rally in the Public Square in front of the Central Court Building of the Maricopa County Superior Court, 201 West Jefferson, Phoenix, Arizona. The rally will consist of speakers, a mass re-affirmation of the Lawyer’s
Oath, a moment of silence and the singing of God Bless America.

We, the concerned lawyers of Maricopa County have been sworn to uphold and defend our Constitution against all enemies, both foreign and domestic. Today our State and Federal Constitutions are being trampled upon by a domestic enemy,
Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Payton Thomas. County Attorney Thomas has violated his Oath of Office and his Lawyer’s Oath to uphold and maintain the integrity and independence of the judiciary. This domestic enemy of our Constitution has done so through his intentional and systematic intimidation and harassment of our leading judges. On Monday we will rally in defense of a free and independent
judiciary and call County Attorney Andrew Thomas to task for his abuse of power.

We invite all lawyers, and indeed, all concerned citizens of Arizona to attend and lend their support to this important cause.

Attorney Thomas Ryan is listed as the contact person. (I'm not printing his phone number.)

I'm told that Rich Robertson, described to me as "former TV newsman, turned investigation expert for the Criminal Defense Bar in Phoenix," is responsible for this paraphrase.

When they abused and ridiculed Maricopa County jail inmates, I remained silent, because I was not an inmate. When they went after opposing candidates, I remained silent, because it was just politics. When they arrested journalists, I remained silent, because it was just the New Times and they deserved it.

Then they went after people who are brown; activists who applauded; civil libertarians who walked through parking lots; mayors and police chiefs who questioned policies; county supervisors who controlled budgets; judges who invoked separation of powers; and defense attorneys who tried to enforce the constitution.

Soon, there may be no one left to speak out for me."

It's time to take a stand against the tyranny of Sheriff Joe Arpaio and County Attorney Andrew Thomas.

Ron Wood, Arizona criminal defense attorney, was kind enough to give me both the press release and Robertson's statement, and give me leave to publish them here.