Ninth Circuit Declines to Vacate Joe Arpaio's Criminal Contempt Record, but Defense Declares Victory

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: Law.com

News

Ninth Circuit Declines to Vacate Joe Arpaio’s Criminal Contempt Record, but Defense Declares Victory

Although a Ninth Circuit panel upheld a federal judge’s refusal to vacate the former Arizona sheriff’s guilty verdict for criminal contempt in the wake of a 2017 pardon from President Donald Trump, Arpaio’s lawyer said the ruling “gave us exactly what we asked for … that the judge’s finding of guilt is legally meaningless.”

By Ross Todd | February 27, 2020 at 12:48 PM

A three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has upheld the decision of the federal judge in Phoenix who oversaw the criminal case against Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff whom the president pardoned in 2017.

U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton of the District of Arizona in Phoenix, who oversaw the criminal contempt of court case against Arpaio, granted his lawyers’ motion to dismiss but declined to vacate the court record in the case, finding the presidential pardon did “not erase a judgment of conviction, or its underlying legal and factual findings.”

In a 15-page published decision issued Thursday, a three-judge Ninth Circuit panel upheld Bolton’s decision refusing to vacate the verdict, but did note that verdict “has no legal consequences” going forward. (1) Ninth Circuit Judge Jay Bybee noted that though colloquially guilty verdicts are often referred to as “convictions,” they don’t have the legal consequences of a “final judgment of conviction” that attaches at sentencing, and thus aren’t subject to the so-called Munsingwear rule, which provides for vacatur of cases that have become moot while on appeal.

{snip}

(1) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bpgOGlhG14Jph7SWHCbpWtfJlagxFlna/preview

Read more: https://www.law.com/therecorder/2020/02/27/ninth-circuit-declines-to-vacate-joe-arpaios-criminal-contempt-record-but-defense-declares-victory/

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Hat tip, Mike Scarcella, via Popehat:

That crazy liberal Ninth Circuit and its leftist firebrand [checks header] Jay Bybee

Link to tweet

Now: Joseph Arpaio, pardoned by Trump, loses bid to vacate criminal contempt verdict. 9th Circuit opinion just issued: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6788507/Arpaio-2020-02-27.pdf

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[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. Justice works! Former Sheriff Joe Arpaio's criminal contempt verdict still stands

OPINION

Justice works! Former Sheriff Joe Arpaio's criminal contempt verdict still stands

Elvia Díaz, The Republic | azcentral.comPublished 11:27 a.m. MT Feb. 27, 2020

Opinion: Federal judges refused to vacate former Sheriff Joe Arpaio's 2017 criminal contempt conviction - a bit of justice for Latinos in Maricopa County.

[Canoe52]

2. Jay Bybee of Brigham Young University, that Jay Bybee?

[alwaysinasnit]

3. Same Jay Bybee who signed off on the torture memos?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture_Memos

A set of legal memoranda known as the "Torture Memos" were drafted by John Yoo as Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the United States and signed in August 2002 by Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee, head of the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice. They advised the Central Intelligence Agency, the United States Department of Defense, and the President on the use of enhanced interrogation techniques: mental and physical torment and coercion such as prolonged sleep deprivation, binding in stress positions, and waterboarding, and stated that such acts, widely regarded as torture, might be legally permissible under an expansive interpretation of presidential authority during the "War on Terror".

[abqtommy]

4. sarcasm on: Don't worry about your legal bills, Joe. tRUMP told me that Mexico will pay them

for you. sarcasm off

[marble falls]

5. Hasn't he figured it out yet? You can't be pardoned for having done nothing. Either he did it ...

and was pardoned or there was no need for a pardon.

Arpaio is a conceited evil mean-spirited prick.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

6. AND he's running for sheriff in 2020 !!!

Can you believe it ? He will not win. Nobody wants to see him in ANY public office, let alone Sheriff of Maricopa County.

He'll be 88, and apparently age has not come with wisdom for this racist turd. What is it with these people who do not realize that their time is past, that their manner of doing things is an anathema to everyone, that people want to see them STFU and STFD ?

[marble falls]

7. I think a lot of his support predeceased him. Even my dad doesn't want him back.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

8. He's in this for one reason and one reason only --

His oversized ego. He, like trump, craves attention. He knows he can't win, but this will give him an opportunity to brag about what a great sheriff he was (Yeah, if you don't count the $44million he caused AZ to pay out for his racism and grandstanding horse flop.), smear everyone he can with the slime that ooooozes from his mouth, then blame the media for having it in for him.

Joe, go away. Just go the fuck away. You're days as Grand Sheriff of the AZ branch of the KKK are over. So are you.

Drop dead, you fossilized old turd.

[marble falls]

9. Doesn't he think he could be a Senator?

[Haggis for Breakfast]

10. He got crushed in that.