April Sponsel looks on during her disciplinary hearing on Oct. 23, 2023. Photo by Kevinjonah Paguio | Cronkite News
Former Maricopa County prosecutor April Sponsel deserved to have her law license suspended for two years because her decision to press forward with made-up gang charges against 15 Black Lives Matter protesters was “a complete abdication of her prosecutorial duties,” the Arizona Supreme Court said Friday.
The high court in September upheld the two-year suspension that the state’s presiding disciplinary judge handed down in December 2023, but it did so without explaining why. On Friday, the Supreme Court explained its reasoning.
“(N)othing less than this sanction would suffice given the egregiousness of the conduct and the impact on those who were wronged…” Justice James Beene wrote on behalf of the unanimous court. “Sponsel was a veteran prosecutor for seventeen years. Her substantial experience made her well aware of the grave consequences of overcharging a case.”
During an October 2020 protest for police reform in downtown Phoenix, police arrested 18 protesters — 15 adults and three juveniles — who failed to obey commands to clear the street and disperse.
Sponsel ultimately convinced a grand jury to indict the 15 adults on gang-related felonies, alleging that they were members of a gang called ACAB — an acronym for the protest chant “All Cops Are Bastards.” She told grand jurors that the ACAB gang was comparable to notorious street gangs like the Bloods, Crips, Hells Angels and the Mexican Mafia.
But there is no such gang.
When leadership at the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office met to discuss the charges, Sponsel defended the indictment, saying that the protesters had sharpened fingernails and carried umbrellas with sharpened tips, which proved they had colluded.
Months later, when news reports highlighted the unprecedented ACAB gang charges against the peaceful protesters, MCAO reviewed the evidence Sponsel claimed backed up the indictments. A veteran gang prosecutor found that Sponsel had lied about the evidence — there were no sharpened fingernails or umbrella tips — and the people charged as gang members had shown up at the protest in response to social media postings.
MCAO dismissed all of the charges against the protesters.
In June 2022, after an internal investigation found that Sponsel had engaged in “a disturbing pattern of excessive charging and a failure to review available evidence,” she was fired. By December 2022, the State Bar of Arizona had filed a disciplinary complaint against her.
After a seven-day trial in October 2023, the court’s disciplinary panel suspended her license to practice law for two years, concluding that her actions had “far-reaching” and “deleterious consequences.”
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This post was originally authored and published by Jim Small from AZ Mirror via RSS Feed. Join today to get your news feed on Nationwide Report®.
