Los Angeles Times
By Nigel Duara
May 24, 2015
With
his legal fees mounting and a trial turning increasingly personal,
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is turning to the public for money
and the legal system for
a new judge.
Arpaio
said in a letter to supporters that he doesn't have the money to
continue paying for attorneys out of his own pocket, adding that he
feels "targeted" by the immigration
rights groups that have sued him to stop what they say are racist
policies targeting Latinos.
"In
some instances I have to personally pay for attorneys to represent me
in these cases," Arpaio wrote in an email Thursday. "I do not have the
personal wealth or the
wherewithal to keep up with the costly demands of paying for attorneys
to defend me."
Arpaio
made the plea while awaiting a decision by U.S. District Judge G.
Murray Snow on whether the sheriff broke the law in failing to carry out
a 2011 court order to
refrain from bias against minorities.
On
Friday, Arpaio asked for Snow to be taken off the case. His reasoning:
The judge is personally involved in the case because Arpaio's former
lawyer authorized a secret
investigation of Snow's wife.
"No
reasonable person with knowledge of the facts can deny that Judge Snow
is now investigating and presiding over issues involving his own
family," Arpaio's lawyers wrote
in the filing.
Arpaio
had struck an unusually conciliatory tone with Snow in April, when the
83-year-old sheriff answered the first of two inquiries into his actions
after being ordered
to stop racial profiling by his department.
Snow
had ruled in 2013 that the sheriff's office had systematically racially
profiled Latinos in its regular traffic and immigration patrols.
"I
want to apologize to the judge," Arpaio said last month. "I should have
known more about these court orders that slipped through the cracks."
The
tactic of asking to remove a judge has worked for Arpaio before. In
2009, he successfully argued to have U.S. District Judge Mary Murguia
taken off the profiling case
because her twin sister was a prominent leader of a national Latino
advocacy organization.
Legally,
Arpaio is facing his greatest challenges from another federal judge,
David G. Campbell, who in January ordered an immediate halt to the
state's enforcement of
identity theft laws that penalize immigrants in the country illegally
for seeking employment.
Arpaio was using that law to justify workplace raids.
He is scheduled to appear before Snow again in June, a date that could be affected by his filing.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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