Maricopa County

The law allows prosecutors to charge people with murder even if they haven’t killed anyone. Multiple people have been imprisoned for killings committed by police.

Phoenix’s police chief called the findings of a damning DOJ report “accusations.” City leaders continue to reject federal oversight. They voted to give the police more money instead.

After The Appeal published an investigation into the Phoenix Police Department’s killing of 19-year-old Jacob Harris, a community coalition sprung up to help Harris’s three young friends, who are incarcerated for his death. Now, a court has granted the trio a chance to get out of prison.

In June, the DOJ said the Phoenix Police Department routinely commits egregious civil rights violations. Community members are demanding change—and the release of three Phoenix youths imprisoned for a murder committed by a police officer.

At least 88 unhoused people were killed in Maricopa County, Arizona, between 2021 and 2023. Experts say the deaths are a microcosm of a worrying national trend.

Jacob Harris’s father is heading to appeals court on Wednesday. Federal judges will decide the fate of his wrongful death suit against the city of Phoenix.

As Phoenix begins to displace around 700 people from an encampment near downtown, the ACLU of Arizona is asking a judge to find the city in contempt of a court order prohibiting it from violating the rights of the unhoused.

It’s been four years since a Phoenix police officer killed Jacob Harris. Records obtained by The Appeal show officials have made inconsistent or false statements about the night police killed him. As Harris’s friends grow up behind bars, his father won’t stop until he gets justice for his son.

Midterm election results show the bad-faith “crime wave” narrative failed to con a critical mass of voters, who instead want a less draconian police state.

The stakes for getting reporting on abortion right are very high, but it costs nothing to call out politicians on their BS.

Prosecutors across the country could soon be tasked with enforcing abortion laws that require people to reproduce against their will.

Maricopa County elects a new top prosecutor this year. In the meantime, state law could let the county’s conservative county attorney prosecute abortions if Roe falls.

B.S., a 61-year-old Black man, has struggled with substance use for decades. Now, prosecutors are leveraging his record against him—and forbidding references to racial justice, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, B.S.’s potential sentence, or his health problems at his trial.

Incumbent Maricopa County Attorney Allister Adel is backed by police unions and has declined to charge officers in high-profile killings. Challenger Julie Gunnigle says she wants to create an independent unit to review police use-of-force cases.

One candidate for Maricopa County attorney says she’ll make clearing past marijuana convictions ‘universal and automatic’ if elected. The other has not said she would do anything to support expunging criminal records.

The state’s pre-Roe abortion ban includes mandatory prison time for people who provide or obtain abortions. Candidates for top prosecutor in Maricopa County differ on whether they would prosecute such cases.

Allister Adel paints herself as a reformer, but her record shows otherwise.

B.S., a 61-year-old with chronic respiratory problems, has struggled with substance use for decades. Police and prosecutors sought the harshest sentence possible after he failed to return the car.

Julie Gunnigle, who is running in Maricopa County, says she supports alternatives to incarceration. But a decade ago in Illinois, she prosecuted a woman for recording phone calls and helped put her in jail for 18 months. 

Hundreds were forced from an encampment to fenced-in, asphalt parking lots with no shade in Phoenix’s triple-digit summer heat. At least three people have died.

Prosecutors wanted to make an example of Justin Dixon, who has been in an Arizona prison for 14 years, with 37 ahead of him. Now, as COVID-19 spreads in the facility where he’s being held, his family is desperate for him to be released.

The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office waited four years to charge Danielle Sutherland for one of the DUIs. After serving time for the others, she received treatment for her substance use issues and pursued a degree.

Report attempts to discredit decades of research on the adolescent mind.

Many jurisdictions across the country use video instead of holding bail hearings in person, a practice that often leads to dire consequences.

With Caroline Isaacs of the American Friends Service Committee

The ACLU of Arizona is suing Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery’s office over its alleged lack of transparency.

A federal appellate court has ruled that the office of Maricopa County District Attorney Bill Montgomery violated the law with their wiretapping practices. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit found that Montgomery didn’t personally review and sign off on surveillance warrants, which is required by federal law. Montgomery instead relied on a less […]