Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 42
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a Republican push that could have blocked more than 41,000 Arizona voters from casting ballots for president in the state that Democrat Joe Biden won by less than 11,000 votes four years ago. But in a 5-4 order, the high court allowed some enforcement of regulations barring people from voting in state and local elections if they don't provide proof of citizenship when they register. The justices acted on an emergency appeal filed by state and national Republicans that sought to give f...
PHOENIX (AP) — Phoenix police discriminate against Black, Hispanic and Native American people, unlawfully detain homeless people and use excessive force, including unjustified deadly force, according to a sweeping federal civil rights investigation of law enforcement in the nation's fifth-largest city. The U.S. Justice Department report released Thursday says investigators found stark racial disparities in how officers in the Phoenix Police Department enforce certain laws, including low-level drug and traffic offenses. Investigators found that...
PHOENIX (AP) — Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani pleaded not guilty Tuesday to nine felony charges stemming from his role in an effort to overturn Donald Trump's 2020 election loss in Arizona to Joe Biden. Ten others, including former Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward, also pleaded not guilty to conspiracy, forgery and fraud charges related to the case. Giuliani appeared remotely for the arraignment that was held in a Phoenix courtroom. His and Ward's trials are scheduled for Oct. 17, about 3 weeks before the U.S. election. D...
PHOENIX (AP) — Democrats in the Arizona Senate cleared a path to bring a proposed repeal of the state's near-total ban on abortions to a vote after the state's highest court concluded the law can be enforced and the state House blocked efforts to undo the long-dormant statute. Although no vote was taken on the repeal itself, Republican Sens. T.J. Shope and Shawnna Bolick sided with 14 Democrats in the Senate on Wednesday in changing rules to let a repeal proposal advance after the deadline for hearing bills had passed. Proponents say the S...
PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona will soon join 14 other states that have banned abortion at all stages of pregnancy, a change triggered by a state Supreme Court ruling Tuesday that found officials may enforce an 1864 law criminalizing all abortions except when a woman's life is at stake. The court said enforcement won't begin for at least two weeks. The law provides no exceptions for rape or incest. The number of abortions in the state is expected to drop from about 1,100 monthly — as estimated by a survey for the Society of Family Planning — to nearl...
PHOENIX (AP) — An Arizona constable who got the job earlier this year when her predecessor quit over frustration about serving eviction notices was shot and killed while carrying out that same duty. The gunman, his neighbor and the manager of his apartment complex also died, authorities said. The shooting happened just after 11 a.m. Thursday at the Lind Commons Apartments in Tucson. Constable Deborah Martinez-Garibay and Angela Fox-Heath, the complex manager, were attempting to serve an eviction notice on Gavin Lee Stansell when he opened f...
FLORENCE, Ariz. (AP) — An Arizona man convicted of killing a college student in 1978 was put to death Wednesday after a nearly eight-year hiatus in the state's use of the death penalty brought on by a nearly two-hour execution that critics say was botched. Clarence Dixon, 66, died by lethal injection at the state prison in Florence for his murder conviction in the killing of 21-year-old Arizona State University student Deana Bowdoin, making him the sixth person to be executed in the U.S. in 2022. Dixon's death was announced late Wednesday m...
The seditious conspiracy case against members and associates of the far-right Oath Keepers militia group marks the boldest attempt so far by the government to prosecute those who attacked the U.S. Capitol, but invoking the rarely used charge carries considerable risks. Still, legal experts who have reviewed the indictment unsealed this past week against Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and 10 others said prosecutors stand a good chance of winning convictions on allegations that the defendants were working together to use force to stop the...
The long-standing practice of allowing attorneys to dismiss prospective jurors without giving a reason has come under intense criticism after a nearly all-white jury was picked to decide whether three white men are guilty of murder for shooting and killing Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man who was jogging though a neighborhood in Georgia. The selection of 11 white jurors and one Black man to decide the fate of the three defendants has drawn complaints from prosecutors and the victim's family that jury selection process was blatantly unfair. Even the j...
PHOENIX (AP) — An Oklahoma man seen on video pushing an Associated Press photographer over a wall outside the Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot has been arrested, authorities said Tuesday. Benjamen Scott Burlew of Miami, Oklahoma, is the second person to be charged with attacking photographer John Minchillo, who was documenting the mob of former President Donald Trump's supporters that day. Burlew is accused of yelling at, grabbing, dragging and ultimately pushing Minchillo over a low stone wall on the Capitol grounds. Authorities say Burlew was a...
CHANDLER, Ariz. (AP) — The annoyed shopper paced around and knocked on the windows of a minivan blocking him from leaving his Costco parking spot. He didn't seem to notice, or care, that there was no one inside. A colleague and I had called for the Waymo ride — our first in a fully driverless vehicle — and quickly encountered a hiccup: figuring out how to tell it to meet us at the curb. We ended up spotting the minivan across the bustling parking lot, and hurried over. As we pulled away, the shopper raised his arm and extended his middle finge...
PHOENIX (AP) — Federal prosecutors who initially said there was "strong evidence" the pro-Trump mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol last week aimed to "capture and assassinate elected officials" backed away from the allegation after the head of the investigation cautioned Friday that the probe is still in its early stages and there was no "direct evidence" of such intentions. The accusation came in a court filing by prosecutors late Thursday in Phoenix in the case against Jacob Chansley, the Arizona man who took part in the insurrection while spo...
PHOENIX (AP) — A former Arizona politician who admitted running an illegal adoption scheme in three states involving women from the Marshall Islands was sentenced in Arkansas to six years in federal prison. It was the first of three punishments he'll face for arranging adoptions prohibited by an international compact. Paul Petersen, a Republican who served as metro Phoenix's assessor for six years and also worked as an adoption attorney, illegally paid women from the Pacific island nation to come to the U.S. to give up their babies in at l...
PHOENIX (AP) — An 81-year-old man who has spent most of his adult life behind bars for stealing from banks said he robbed a credit union in Tucson months after his release from prison because his monthly $800 Social Security payment wasn't enough to live on, according to court records. Robert Francis Krebs also told FBI agents that he didn't wear a disguise to the January 2018 robbery because he "kind of wanted to get caught" and return to prison. Details of the heist were revealed in court records filed Friday over whether Krebs, who turns 8...
PHOENIX (AP) — A husband arrested in Arizona on suspicion of concealing his wife's dead body was seen earlier on security video moving a woman's naked body to his vehicle outside a Texas hotel, police said Tuesday. Previous footage showed the couple from Sand Springs, Oklahoma, walking into their room at the El Paso hotel on Sunday evening. The next morning, 70-year-old Rodney Puckett is seen using a luggage cart to move the body of 74-year-old Linda Puckett, said Sgt. Kristie Barnette, a police spokeswoman in Eloy, where Rodney Puckett was l...
MARICOPA, Ariz. (AP) — A woman who operated a popular YouTube channel featuring kids is facing allegations she used pepper spray to discipline her seven adopted children, and locked them for days in a closet at their home outside Phoenix, authorities said Wednesday. Machelle Hobson's children had no food, water or access to a bathroom whenever they were sequestered in a closet, according to a police report. Officers who went to the house last Wednesday reported that children appeared malnourished and underweight. The Arizona Department of C...
PHOENIX (AP) — A political ad from President Donald Trump that shows a Mexican immigrant bragging about killing police officers has put the spotlight back on noted immigration hard-liner Joe Arpaio, who detained and released the man in the video years ago. The former six-term sheriff of metro Phoenix says he's being unfairly blamed for releasing the immigrant depicted in the video that has stoked immigration anxieties in the days leading up to the midterm elections. The ad centers on Luis Bracamontes, who was convicted of murder in the 2014 sho...
PHOENIX (AP) — The sales and marketing director of Backpage.com pleaded guilty Friday to conspiring to facilitate prostitution, acknowledging that he participated in a scheme to give free ads to prostitutes in a bid to draw them away from competitors and win over their future business. Dan Hyer is the second Backpage.com employee to plead guilty in cases in Arizona in which the site has been accused of ignoring warnings to stop running prostitution ads, some of which involved children. Authorities say the site has brought in $500 million in p...
PHOENIX (AP) — A new indictment in Arizona against operators of Backpage.com alleges the classified ad site gave free ads to prostitutes and cultivated arrangements with others who worked in the sex trade to get them to post ads with the company. The indictment filed Wednesday repeats allegations in an initial round of charges and adds six new money laundering charges against founder Mike Lacey and 50 charges of facilitating prostitution against chief financial officer John Brunst. A total of seven people were charged in an indictment in late M...
PHOENIX (AP) — Dwight Lamon Jones apparently never put his bitter divorce behind him. Almost eight years after splitting from his wife, the Phoenix-area man began confronting people connected with the breakup and shooting them, killing six people in four days last week before ending his own life as police drew near, authorities said. A day after Jones' death, police said they did not know why he waited so long to seek vengeance. But experts said it's not unusual for killers who feel wronged by catastrophic life events to wait years to settle o...
PHOENIX (AP) — Five football players at an Arizona high school claimed in a lawsuit Wednesday that coaches and administrators knew upperclassmen were physically and sexually abusing them in hazing rituals but did nothing to stop it or punish their attackers. The lawsuit said the attacks at Hamilton High School in Chandler continued because officials failed to confront the problem and instead dismissed complaints from students and parents. The civil case was filed three months after prosecutors declined to file criminal charges against p...
PHOENIX (AP) — A judge overseeing a class-action lawsuit over the quality of health care in Arizona's prisons says he will issue a judgment against the state for failing to adequately overhaul its health care system for inmates. U.S. Magistrate Judge David Duncan made the comment Wednesday at a court hearing when discussing his upcoming ruling over whether to fine the state for failing to make the improvements to inmate care that it promised when it agreed three years ago to settle the lawsuit. While he hasn't yet issued a judgment against the...
PHOENIX (AP) — An Arizona middle school principal who failed to alert police of an attack planned by four students on her school told them she was going to contact authorities after she finished investigating the threat, police said Wednesday. The plot involving High Desert Middle School in Globe was foiled several days before it was to be carried out when the mother of another student called police after learning about the threat. Principal Lori Rodriguez heard of the plot on March 28 and was conducting an internal investigation to d...
PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona Corrections Director Charles Ryan has corrected his testimony from a hearing this week to determine whether he should be found in contempt of court for failing to adequately improve health care for prisoners. Ryan testified Tuesday that $2.5 million in incentives paid by the state to Corizon Health Inc., Arizona's contractor for inmate care, over a four-month period ending in late January came from savings from having hundreds of unfilled jobs within the Department of Corrections. The following day, Ryan said in a court f...
PHOENIX (AP) — An attorney for one of two Arizona woman charged with burglarizing a mosque as they spewed derogatory comments about Muslims said Thursday that his client's case isn't about hate speech but rather about her exercise of free speech rights. Tahnee Gonzales, 32, and Elizabeth Dauenhauer, 51, filmed themselves on March 4 as they removed fliers and Qurans from shelves, bins and bulletin boards in a fenced-in courtyard behind the Islamic Community Center in Tempe, a Phoenix suburb. The two are known for making anti-Muslim statements a...
