Deputy: Arpaio told me to defy court order

Sheriff Joe Arpaio's civil-contempt proceeding in federal court opened Tuesday with explosive testimony by one of Arpaio's own sergeants, who told the court the Maricopa County lawman deliberately violated a judge's orders in a racial-profiling suit.

Sgt. Brett Palmer testified that Arpaio had personally instructed him to continue enforcing federal immigration law after Judge G. Murray Snow had prohibited the practice.

The statements were the strongest support yet for claims that Arpaio's failure to abide by Snow's orders were deliberate, an assertion that Arpaio's attorneys have repeatedly denied. A finding of willful violations could result in steep sanctions against the embattled office, including a referral for criminal-contempt proceedings.

In December 2011, amid a racial-profiling suit against the agency, Snow instructed sheriff's officials to stop detaining people solely on the suspicion of being in the country illegally. A detainment, the order said, must include a suspicion that an individual had committed a state crime.

But Palmer, a supervisor in the now-defunct human-smuggling unit, testified Tuesday that despite his efforts to implement training that would reflect the court order, his suggestions never reached patrol deputies.

Cecillia Wang, a plaintiffs' attorney from the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants' Rights Project, pressed Palmer for his take on why the training never materialized.

"It was contrary to the goals and objectives of the sheriff," Palmer responded.

Palmer then cited a specific instance when deputies pulled over a vehicle full of people, some of whom were suspected of the state crime of human smuggling. About a quarter of the people who were not suspected of a state crime were subject to lengthy interrogations, he said.

According to agency policy, he said, the occupants were to be handed over to U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents. But ICE officials declined to pick up the individuals, Palmer said.

Palmer said he contacted Customs and Border Patrol officers in Casa Grande as a backup plan.

After advising his chain of command, Palmer said his supervisor notified him to call Arpaio directly on his cellphone.

"The sheriff took a very authoritative stance with me," Palmer said of the conversation. "(He) told me I was not to release these individuals. I was to hold them, pending his arrival."

Palmer said the two argued for a few minutes, but Palmer held his ground.

"I told the sheriff immediately that was an unlawful order and I was not going to follow it," he said.

Arpaio eventually acquiesced, Palmer said, but only after directing Palmer to take photographs of the detainees.

Palmer said this was not standard protocol, but he didn't want to belabor an argument with his boss.

"It seemed like a reasonable method for me to discontinue the conversation," he said.

Later, Wang ensured there was no confusion over who Palmer blamed for the agency's defiance of the preliminary injunction.

"My opinion on who is ultimately responsible is the sheriff," Palmer said.

Upon cross-examination, defense attorneys immediately worked to challenge Palmer's credibility. Arpaio's attorney, Michele Iafrate, launched into a line of questioning aimed to suggest Palmer's testimony was a retaliatory response to being passed over for promotions.

"You're not happy with your career path at the MCSO, are you?" Iafrate asked.

Palmer acknowledged that, to a certain extent, he was not.

Iafrate then undercut Palmer's testimony by pointing out that Palmer didn't fully understand the judge's orders himself.

"You took it upon yourself to call Border Patrol," which, she said, "likewise violates the preliminary injunction."

Palmer's testimony set the stage for the next witness, former Deputy Chief Brian Sands.

Sands, now retired, told plaintiffs' attorney Stanley Young that after the injunction order, Sands told Arpaio the order needed to be relayed to all deputies. Arpaio disagreed and said he believed, based on attorneys' advice, that only those in the human-smuggling unit needed to be informed, according to Sands.

Sands later testified that he could not recall a single instance in which Arpaio indicated he wanted to comply with the court's injunction.

Also Tuesday, one of Arpaio's defense attorneys, Tom Liddy, asked the judge to be removed from the case, citing a potential conflict of interest.

For Palmer, Tuesday was not the first time he offered potentially crucial testimony in a federal court proceeding involving the Sheriff's Office.

Palmer testified in 2012, during the original racial-profiling trial, that he disseminated racially insensitive e-mails to other deputies and supplied sheriff's deputies in the immigration-enforcement unit with an inaccurate or false interpretation of federal immigration law.

In Palmer's case, that information flowed both ways during the heyday of the sheriff's immigration-enforcement efforts. Research that Palmer did on federal immigration law ended up being cited by Arpaio during a 2009 press conference. It was later learned that the law Arpaio cited did not exist and that the research was a legal interpretation taken from an anti-illegal-immigration website.

In previous hearings, Snow has vowed to refer Arpaio and his top aides to the U.S. Attorney's Office for criminal-contempt proceedings should he find civil-contempt remedies insufficient.

The difference between civil and criminal contempt largely hinges on intent to defy a judge's orders. A criminal-contempt finding could result in steeper punishments or even jail time.

While Arpaio's attorneys have admitted to the violations, they have repeatedly denied that the sheriff willfully disobeyed the court's orders.

These assertions were echoed by Iafrate at the onset of Tuesday's hearing,attributing the failures to misinformation and a lack of organization.

"It's a culture that we are attempting to fix," she said. "They were not on purpose, they were not willful, they were negligent areas that need to be fixed."