By Mark Flatten
March 6, 2019
According
to a recently released city personnel investigation, Scottsdale City
Prosecutor Caron Close berated and bullied people in front of others. She
played favorites among her employees, giving certain people special treatment
while singling others out for punishment, and creating a “toxic” environment
rife with fear of retaliation. The results of the review prompted Close’s
retirement, effective March 18.
If Close treated her employees so
aggressively, imagine what defendants that she and her office went after were
subjected to.
We know the answer, at least in part,
because the Scottsdale justice system played an oversized role in an eight-part
Goldwater Institute investigation into city courts that was published between
July 2017 and April 2018. (The full series can be found here.)
One of the stories focused on the case
of Randon
Miller, owner of a restaurant near Scottsdale Road and Frank Lloyd Wright
Boulevard. Miller had long complained to city officials about police using his
parking lot to pull over motorists, write citations and conduct traffic investigations.
That was bad for business, Miller said. Flashing emergency lights on squad cars
annoyed customers. And the line of police cars frequently blocked the parking
lot, leaving patrons to stand at the curb waiting for the officers to finish
their work and leave.
In response to Miller’s complaints,
police set up a phony sting operation intended to “incite” (their word) Miller
into losing his temper and breaking the law. He fell for it and was arrested on
misdemeanor charges that included disorderly conduct and failure to obey police
orders.
Exactly a year later, police set up
another sting to incite Miller into committing some act for which he could be
arrested. This time, Close gave instructions that police hold Miller in custody
and contact her after he was arrested. That directive was given before the officers even went to
Miller’s restaurant. Miller was prosecuted by Close and convicted on both
occasions in Scottsdale city court.
In a
different case, police had arrested a licensed massage therapist,
identified only as “Julie” by the Goldwater Institute to protect her identity,
on charges of prostitution. The case came down to Julie’s word against the
officer’s. The only independent evidence was a recording from a surveillance
microphone the officer wore into the massage room. But the transmitter stopped
working when the officer entered the building, so there was no corroborating
evidence of the officer’s version. Julie was convicted of prostitution and a
variety of lesser crimes in Scottsdale city court.
“They don’t realize that they are
wrecking someone’s whole existence,” said Julie, who vehemently denies the
charges brought by the city prosecutor’s office. “It destroys a person
completely. You have no hope of getting your life back.”
There is nothing wrong with an
aggressive prosecutor. It is their job to be tough. But the check on the
prosecutor’s power is supposed to be an independent judge, something that is
lacking in city courts throughout Arizona.
As the Goldwater Institute series
pointed out, municipal judges in every Arizona city except Yuma are hired, and
can be fired, by city councils. City courts are the only level of the judiciary
in Arizona in which the judges never answer to the people through elections. As
a result, they are vulnerable to political pressure from council members, city
prosecutors, police, and city administrators.
That pressure might be to raise money
for the city, money that only comes with convictions. In the 2018 fiscal year,
Scottsdale’s city court raked in about
$7 million in revenue, including fines from photo radar tickets, while
costing the city about $4.8 million to operate. Or the pressure might be to
give favored treatment to influential city insiders, or to sign off on
questionable city policies, such as well-publicized “crackdowns” on various
offenses.
The Goldwater Institute is advocating
legislation that would require city court judges to face voters at some point
through an election. The intent is to make judges more independent by making
them answerable to the citizens of their community, not to politicians on the
council.
Bullying behavior is a bad thing from an
employer. It’s also a bad thing from a prosecutor who has the power to put you
in jail or cost you many thousands of dollars in fines, court costs, and legal
fees. As Close’s case demonstrates, city employees who are mistreated at least
have the recourse of the city’s personnel department, and if that fails, in
courts that are presided over by independent judges who answer to the people. For
the average citizen, that level of protection does not exist in city court.
Mark Flatten is
the National Investigative Journalist at the Goldwater Institute.
