Sheriff Joe Arpaio's chief deputy grilled on stand in contempt hearings

Attorneys put Sheriff Joe Arpaio's top deputy in the hot seat over his management of the office as civil-contempt hearings against the sheriff and his aides resumed in U.S. District Court after a five-month hiatus.

Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan was the first to be called to the witness stand Thursday. He spent the day deflecting a salvo of challenges over his office’s internal investigative practices and his personal character.

Sheridan's seven hours of often-acrimonious testimony marked the first time since April that top officials of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office appeared in federal court to face official contempt proceedings. Sheridan was the last to testify in April, and was still considered under oath as he took the witness stand again Thursday.

The hearings stem from three allegations of contempt:

Sheriff's officials did not disclose all relevant information during pretrial proceedings in the original racial-profiling case.

The agency failed to halt its immigration-enforcement activities after Snow ordered it to do so.

Arpaio's aides failed to properly follow Snow's order to quietly collect on-duty recordings from deputies.

Cecillia Wang, a plaintiffs’ attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, focused the first half of the day on one of three contempt allegations: that sheriff’s deputies continued illegal-immigration enforcement for a year and a half after U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow ordered them to halt the practice.

The original order was issued in a case in which Arpaio's agency was found to have engaged in racial profiling. In December 2011, Snow issued a preliminary injunction barring deputies from detaining suspects solely on suspicion that they are in the country illegally. Deputies must also suspect the individual committed a state crime.

Sheridan and Arpaio have admitted violating that order but contend it was inadvertent, not willful. The distinction is important — it could mean the difference between findings of civil or criminal contempt.

Sheridan has repeatedly testified that he was unaware of the order.

E-mail questions

Through her examination, Wang painstakingly ripped holes in that argument. She introduced a series of e-mails addressed to Sheridan that mentioned the injunction and noted he attended meetings where the matter was discussed.

Sheridan explained that he likely received the e-mails, but did not recall opening them. He also said he did not recall a meeting with defense attorneys prior to the initial racial-profiling case.

Wang pressed on the issue of the e-mails. She asked if the correspondence should have been opened and deemed important by the chief deputy.

“I am saying, sitting here today, that is something the chief deputy should have done, but that is not what I did,” Sheridan said.

Sheridan said he was then preoccupied with other issues, including the murder of a deputy, the office’s bungled handling of hundreds of sex-crime cases, and a high-profile death at one of the jails.

Wang later shifted her focus onto the office's internal investigations, which recently have come under fire by plaintiffs' attorneys in the case. Her questioning aimed to paint a picture of an office that systematically excuses and enables troubling behavior.

Sheridan batted away implications of impropriety, including those regarding his own discipline.

After receiving 40 hours of unpaid leave for his failure to enforce the preliminary injunction, Sheridan was allowed to appeal his discipline. He did so to Mike Olson, the office’s chief of detention and Sheridan’s subordinate.

“I’m going to put that weight on your shoulders, Mike,” Sheridan said, as relayed by a recording played in court. “If you think it is best for this organization to discipline me, then that’s what you need to do.”

Wang asked if Sheridan thought it would be awkward for Olson to be in charge of punishing his boss. Sheridan said his response was aimed to relieve any guilt Olson would have had in the situation.

Investigations tied to ID cards

Wang drilled into what has been dubbed the "Armendariz spinoff investigations," named after the late former Deputy Charley Armendariz. Last year, investigators unearthed a stash of ID cards, license plates, drugs and sawed-off shotguns in Armendariz's home.

More IDs were found in Sheriff's Office facilities, and officials fielded additional complaints of stolen cash. The evidence at best signaled misappropriated property. At worst, it could be viewed as outright theft by deputies.

The discoveries prompted dozens of criminal and administrative probes, conducted by the office's internal Professional Standards Bureau.

Sheridan testified that from among the 40-odd "Armendariz spinoff" cases, six to eight employees received discipline in the form of written reprimands. There were no criminal charges filed.

It was under this line of questioning where Wang struck a nerve. The plaintiffs’ attorney latched onto Sheridan’s comments that suggested he believed the criminal accusations were unfounded, and that the prejudgment absolved the deputies of any guilt.

“We didn’t have probable cause to issue them the Miranda warnings,” Sheridan snapped, raising his voice. “But we did it anyway, because we knew that you would be on our ass if we didn’t.”

In-house accusations

In late afternoon, Wang pointed to evidence that suggested even in-house accusations made by other deputies were swept aside.

Wang said a deputy alleged that two co-workers refused to take law-enforcement action after a Latino made a civil complaint. Instead, the allegation goes, the deputies threatened to contact immigration officials to have them deported.

Sheridan said it was difficult to follow up on that investigation since it happened a year and a half before the deputy reported it.

The hearings stem from three allegations of contempt:

Sheriff's officials did not disclose all relevant information during pretrial proceedings in the original racial-profiling case.

The agency failed to halt its immigration-enforcement activities after Snow ordered it to do so.

Arpaio's aides failed to properly follow Snow's order to quietly collect on-duty recordings from deputies.

Mel McDonald, special counsel for Arpaio, said after the hearing that he found Sheridan credible in his testimony.

“We have maintained from Day One that there was not willful defiance of the court order,” he said.

Wang disagreed.

"There is simply no way that Chief Sheridan is believable when he says that he was unaware of the preliminary injunction order,” she told reporters.

“They’ve been fighting our efforts to get to the truth of what actually happened,” she said. “We do think that rather than try to comply with court orders, we are going to put on evidence that in fact there were deliberate efforts to subvert the court’s orders.”

Friday's hearing

Upon hearing all of the testimony, Snow will decide what type of restitution the office must pay to racial-profiling victims.

Snow also could order reforms or more oversight of the agency’s internal affairs, or refer the case to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for criminal-contempt charges.

As the hearing ended Thursday evening, throngs of protesters with hand-painted signs and megaphones lined the sidewalk outside the courthouse, demanding Arpaio’s ouster.

Sheridan will return to the witness stand Friday. He will be followed by several other Sheriff’s Office employees, Arpaio’s former attorneys and Arpaio himself.