Jury rules for Sheriff Arpaio in Saban suit

A jury in a civil lawsuit found Thursday that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio did not defame a political opponent.

The verdict went against Buckeye Police Chief Dan Saban, who ran against Arpaio in 2004. Saban said losing the lawsuit won’t keep him from running for Maricopa County Sheriff again in 2008, and he said he plans to appeal the jury’s finding.

“You cannot run from this type of malfeasance,” Saban said after the verdict Thursday afternoon at the county’s Northeast Regional Court Center.

Saban, a former Mesa police commander and current Gilbert resident, alleged that Arpaio illegally investigated claims that he raped his adoptive mother in 1973. Saban said a deputy then leaked the information to KNXV-TV (Channel 15) in order to smear him during the 2004 Republican primary.

Channel 15 later fired the reporter who broke the story after learning he donated $100 to Arpaio’s campaign. During the trial, Saban admitted to having sex with his adoptive mother, but called it sexual abuse.

Arpaio’s attorney, Dennis Willenchik, said the “frivolous” lawsuit was “a political hatchet job by Dan Saban that backfired on him.” Willenchik’s firm received hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, which he plans to win back for the county by filing an abuse of process lawsuit against Saban in the coming weeks.

Arpaio said he doesn’t believe in negative campaigning. “I never mentioned his five wives. I never mentioned the rape during the last election,” Arpaio said.

But Saban’s attorney, Joel Robbins, said he thought the jury only disagreed with them about legal points of what constitutes defamation, not their opinion that Arpaio has been corrupted by a desire for media attention.