Judge releases records of New Times case

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Anna Baca unsealed transcripts of closed hearings, subpoenas and all other related grand jury documents Wednesday related to a recently discontinued investigation of Phoenix New Times by the Maricopa County attorney and sheriff.

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Most of the information in the documents has already been made public by New Times in a cover story written by owners Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, including details of what the county attorney was seeking through subpoenas and what happened at a previous hearing.

In addition to reporters’ notes and other material related to stories the newspaper had published on Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the subpoenas also sought broad information on the paper’s Internet users.

At the previous hearing, Baca had revealed special prosecutor Dennis Wilenchik had apparently asked a mutual friend to call the judge and tell her that Wilenchik wanted to talk to her.

According to the transcripts released Wednesday, the judge also spent some time trying to sort through a hallway confrontation between Wilenchik and New Times reporters in which Wilenchik complained reporter John Dougherty challenged him to a fight. The judge told them to put their complaints in writing.

David Bodney, attorney for Phoenix Newspapers and KPNX Broadcasting, argued it was in the interest of justice to unseal the documents so that the public could judge the county attorney’s possibly questionable motives for investigating New Times.

“If the grand jury materials show abuse of process, then we can take informed steps to ensure that such abuses not occur again,” Bodney said prior to the hearing.

New Times, New Times writer Paul Rubin, Dougherty, who is no longer on staff, and the State Bar joined Bodney’s motion. County Attorney Andrew Thomas also supported the request, and no one objected.

Baca, who is the court’s presiding criminal judge, ruled that some of the documents should be public because they aren’t subject to the secrecy laws. The rest of the documents, including the subpoenas and transcripts, she released because they’d already been made public, and she believed their release would further the interests of justice.

Assistant county attorney Susan Wells told the judge that investigations of New Times are no longer going forward, and she asked the court to quash all outstanding subpoenas related to the New Times and its writers.

The unsealed documents were released to local media outlets immediately following Wednesday’s hearing.

The hearing followed an unusual chain of events. Last Thursday, New Times published an article detailing the contents of grand jury subpoenas, which led to the arrest and jailing Thursday night of the news company’s executive editor and CEO.

On Friday, Thomas, who’d hired a special prosecutor and another outside law firm to investigate the New Times, abandoned the investigation and fired his special prosecutor, citing “serious missteps” in the investigation.