The Arizona Supreme Court issued a full opinion last week explaining why the court upheld the suspension of former Maricopa County prosecutor April Sponsel’s law license for two years. The State Bar of Arizona’s disciplinary judge Margaret Downie issued the suspension in December 2023 due to Sponsel prosecuting violent Antifa rioters who were protesting the death of George Floyd, and the Arizona Supreme Court stated last September that the justices would be issuing an opinion agreeing with the suspension.
A prominent former prosecutor told The Arizona Sun Times that this creates a very bad precedent, judges second guessing prosecutors. The opinion appeared to echo much of the Biden administration’s DOJ report about the Phoenix Police Department (PPD). That report, which focused extensively on PPD’s handling of Antifa riots, selectively left out key details exonerating the police and sided with the rioters’ versions of events, treating their statements as facts.
Steve Serbalik, attorney for the Arizona Conference of Police and Sheriffs, issued a series of videos refuting the DOJ report. Last month, Representative Abe Hamadeh (R-AZ-08) asked the Trump administration last Wednesday to rescind the report. The Trump administration has paused all investigations into police departments around the country launched by the Biden administration.
The court’s opinion nitpicked actions by the longtime prosecutor, who had no disciplinary history but was fired by the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office (MCAO) over it, accusing her of violating several broad, vague ethics rules typically used to target conservative attorneys. Those actions would not normally result in discipline against prosecutors. The opinion downplayed Antifa’s violence and portrayed law enforcement’s response in the worst light possible.
One of the main accusations throughout the opinion was that Sponsel did not watch enough of the bodycam videos from police officers. However, the opinion failed to note that Sponsel had a caseload of 82 cases at the time, and there is no requirement or rule that prosecutors watch a minimal amount of bodycam videos, a relatively new type of evidence which has exploded in volume. The MCAO has 40 employees devoted to responding to requests for bodycam videos. The attorney for the PPD spent numerous 12-hour long days watching all of the bodycam videos from the Floyd rioting.
Similarly, the opinion criticized Sponsel for not showing the grand jury more videos. Again, there are no rules that state that prosecutors must show grand juries a certain number or length of videos.
Another one of the main criticisms of Sponsel was that gang charges shouldn’t have been brought since the Gangnet database, which is operated by federal authorities, did not list Antifa, also known as ACAB (which means All Cops Are Bastards) as a gang. However, sources familiar with gang prosecutions at MCAO previously told The Sun Times that there was no policy at MCAO that required an organization to be listed as a gang in that database in order to bring gang charges. Neither Downie’s opinion nor the court’s opinion mentioned this.
