Pleas for leniency in Griffis sentencing ring hollow in light of Pinal official’s crime

As Pinal County manager, Stanley Griffis oversaw the transformation of the area into “Penal County.”

He was instrumental in luring several public and private prisons to the open deserts around Florence and Eloy, a strategy that appears to have paid off by contributing to the region’s economic base, regardless of whether one agrees with the means. But as subdivisions exploded over the unincorporated San Tan area, Griffis lost interest in the interest of county residents. Now his attorney is fighting to rescue Griffis from having to serve 10 years in prison for stealing more than $400,000 from the same county, after he pleaded guilty to funneling money that would have improved roads in the San Tan area.

Lee Stein said in a memo this week to the sentencing judge that the 64-year-old Griffis is in such poor health that he wouldn’t survive a prison sentence, and had led an exemplary life up to that point as family man, war hero and churchgoer.

That is, until he got mad at his bosses, the Board of Supervisors, for not appreciating him, and in one case supposedly trying to force him out of his job. That person was not identified in the memo, but in hindsight deserves a medal.

Faced with these circumstances, poor Stan could do a lot more damage than a petulant teenager.

This is how Griffis, by way of his lawyer, explains embezzlement of hundreds of thousands of developerdonated dollars which will now not be used to relieve congestion around Queen Creek and Apache Junction, and is not likely to be replaced soon by a private sector newly wary of “public-private partnerships.” (Of course, no explanation would be satisfactory.)

So due to this supposed mistreatment, Griffis’ lawyer argues he should be put on probation or house arrest, rather than be sentenced to a fifth of the prison time he’s eligible for under the law, which is the recommendation made by prosecutor Rick Romley.

Oh, and by the way, Griffis also defrauded the state retirement system out of $37,000 by inflating his county salary and concealed $300,000 of that from the IRS, according to a presentence memo from Romley.

Griffis’ recent track record makes his string of reported maladies — heart disease, diabetes, after-effects of malaria — a little hard to believe, but they are real, if belied by the fact Griffis has taken two recent trips to Africa, in 2005 for a safari and in 2006 for a homebuilding project. So given that and his age, a 10-year prison sentence makes the most sense. A longer term might send a stronger message, but a decade in confinement would probably be enough of a deterrent to any other bureaucrat with the status to pull off this level of white-collar criminality.

At this point, a few years of good behavior in one of those Pinal County prisons would be the best proof of good character Griffis can give to the citizens he ripped off.