Death Penalty News

As sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz., Joe Arpaio engaged in blatant racial discrimination. His officers systematically targeted Latinos, often arresting them on spurious charges and at least sometimes beating them up when they questioned those charges. Read the report from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, and prepare to be horrified. Once Latinos were arrested, bad things happened to them. Many were sent to Tent City, which Arpaio himself proudly called a “ concentration camp ,” where they lived under brutal conditions, with temperatures inside the tents sometimes rising to 145 degrees. And when he received court orders to stop these practices, he simply ignored them, which led to his eventual conviction — after decades in office — for contempt of court. But he had friends in high places, indeed in the highest of places. We now know that Donald Trump tried to get the Justice Department to drop the case against Arpaio, a clear case of attempted obstruction of ...

President Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio Friday, sparing the controversial former Arizona sheriff a spell in jail. The move has drawn an outcry from civil rights groups, given that Arpaio's conviction was for defying a court order to stop traffic patrols targeting suspected immigrants. But others, including the president, have praised Arpaio's stance on law enforcement and immigration. The sheriff who branded himself America's toughest lawman is has long attracted controversy. As news of the pardon breaks, Newsweek reviews five of his biggest scandals. "Concentration camp" As newly elected Sheriff of Maricopa County in the early 1990s, Arpaio pushed the construction of open-air jail called 'Tent City,' which he claimed was a solution not only to prison overcrowding but to "soft" incarceration policies. Inmates were made to wear pink underwear and handcuffs, meals were cut down to two a day with salt and pepper removed to cut costs...