Latest news with #ArizonaCourtofAppeals
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Ex-lawmaker's conviction for child sex crime upheld on appeal
Tony Navarrete, bottom right, makes his initial appearance in court on Aug. 6, 2021, for multiple felony child sex crimes. Maricopa County Superior Court Commissioner Steve McCarthy, left, presided over the hearing and ordered Navarrete held on $50,000 bond. Also pictured is Jeanine Sorrentino, a sex crimes prosecutor for the Maricopa County Attorney's Office. Screenshot via Maricopa County Superior Court. An appeals court on Thursday upheld a former Democratic state legislator's conviction for a child sex crime. Otoniel 'Tony' Navarrete was a state senator representing a west Phoenix legislative district when he was arrested in 2021 and charged with seven felonies for child sex crimes after allegedly molesting and forcing oral sex on two boys. He resigned shortly after he was arrested. Navarrete was tried twice. The first trial in October 2023 ended in a mistrial after jurors couldn't decide on a verdict. Prosecutors tried Navarrete again in 2024, and jurors delivered a split verdict, convicting him of one count of sexual conduct with a minor. He was acquitted of another identical count and a count of molestation of a child. In April 2024, he was sentenced to one year in prison. Navarrete asked the Arizona Court of Appeals to review his case for 'fundamental error.' But the three-judge panel unanimously concluded there were no errors and the conviction and sentence should stand. 'Navarette was present and represented by counsel at all critical stages of the proceeding, except when counsel waived his presence. The record reflects that the superior court afforded Navarette all his constitutional and statutory rights, and that the proceedings were conducted in accordance with the Arizona Rules of Criminal Procedure,' Judge David Weinzweig wrote on behalf of the appellate panel. 'The court conducted appropriate pretrial hearings, and the evidence presented at trial and summarized above was sufficient to support the jury's verdict. Navarette's sentence is also within the range prescribed by law. We find no error on this record.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Cochise County wants redo on tax hike election after judge found voter disenfranchisement
Cochise County wants a redo of an election that sought to hike taxes to pay for a new jail after a judge said the county disenfranchised thousands by failing to send ballots to inactive voters. The tax measure sought to fund a new jail with a half-cent excise tax for 25 years. It passed with 52% of the vote in May 2023. The jail project is currently in its planning phase. But four Cochise County residents — Daniel LaChance, Henry Stephen Conroy, Yvonne Mayer and Robert McCormick — argued in a June 2023 lawsuit the result was invalid because the county disenfranchised almost 11,000 voters on the inactive list by failing to send them ballots in an all-mail election. A person is put on the inactive voter list when mail sent to them by the county recorder has been returned undelivered multiple times. State law allows people on the inactive voter list to vote after confirming their address with an election official. The plaintiffs contended that the outcome would have been different if the disenfranchised voters had voted. The lawsuit was initially dismissed by a Cochise County Superior Court judge who failed to find any misconduct by the board. The case was appealed, and an Arizona Court of Appeals panel ruled the county did disenfranchise almost 11,000 voters on the inactive list. Following that ruling, the county requested the Arizona Supreme Court review the case. But county supervisors reversed course after Cochise County voters elected two new board members in November. Earlier this year, the board voted to withdraw the petition to the Supreme Court. It then voted on March 27 to settle the case, suspend collection of the jail district sales tax, hold a new election in November, and pay the plaintiffs $130,000 in attorney fees. The settlement agreement is contingent upon court approval. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes thinks the county is breaking Arizona law by trying to set aside the election results. In response to the settlement, Mayes filed a motion for the Arizona Secretary of State to intervene. "It appears that the existing parties to this action intend to seek this Court's approval of an agreement to set aside the results of an election, without meeting the requirements to do so under Arizona's election contest statutes," she wrote in the motion filed Tuesday. Mayes also argued LaChance and the other plaintiffs must prove that the results of the election would have been different if inactive voters had been mailed ballots. Jim Barton, a Democratic political attorney with Barton Mendez Soto in Tempe, told The Arizona Republic the move by Cochise County is unusual but likely legal. 'Since there's a lawsuit pending and it's in the context of a settlement, and the judge is overseeing that settlement in a way, perhaps it is OK,' Barton said. The board's March 27 decision was unanimous, but it was a re-do of a vote roughly a week before. A do-over of the vote was required because the March 21 meeting agenda had the wrong court case number. At the March 21 meeting, supervisors maintained they still want to build a new jail. 'We are committed to making sure things are done properly, specifically with regard to elections in the way elections are conducted in this county,' said Supervisor Frank Antenori after the March 21 vote. 'Part of setting it right is to make sure there is no doubt that there is public support to fund the jail through a sales tax. Reach the reporter at The Republic's coverage of southern Arizona is funded, in part, with a grant from Report for America. Support Arizona news coverage with a tax-deductible donation at This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Why Cochise County officials want to redo jail tax hike election
USA Today
13-02-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
Arizona appeals court reverses $75K in sanctions against Gosar, Kern and Finchem
Arizona appeals court reverses $75K in sanctions against Gosar, Kern and Finchem Show Caption Hide Caption Arizona fake electors are prominent Republican Party activists The Briefing video news shows explores who was indicted in 2024 by an Arizona grand jury in an election fraud case for former President Donald Trump. The Arizona Court of Appeals overturned a lower court ruling that mandated three Republican officials, Mark Finchem, Anthony Kern, and Paul Gosar, to cover the legal expenses of former Democratic lawmaker Charlene Fernandez. Fernandez had sent a letter to federal law enforcement urging an investigation into the trio's involvement in the January 6th Capitol riot, which led to a defamation lawsuit against her by the three Republicans. The initial trial court dismissed the defamation lawsuit, deeming it baseless, and granted Fernandez $75,000 in legal fees. The Arizona Court of Appeals reversed a lower court's order requiring three current and former Republican elected officials to pay the attorney's fees of a former Democratic state lawmaker from a defamation lawsuit dismissed in 2022. Former Rep. Charlene Fernandez, assistant minority leader in the Arizona House in 2021, signed a letter asking federal law enforcement officials to investigate Mark Finchem, Anthony Kern and U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar for their involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. Finchem and Kern were state House representatives when Donald Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. Finchem is now in the state Senate. The letter alleged they 'through words and conduct aided and abetted sedition, treason or any other federal crimes.' The three Republicans filed a defamation lawsuit against Fernandez, which the trial court dismissed, saying the claims were groundless. The trial court found that Fernandez's letter was protected by the constitutional guarantees to free speech and the right to petition the government. It also ruled that the men brought the lawsuit without substantial justification, awarding Fernandez $75,000 in attorney's fees as a sanction. The Court of Appeals upheld that award, but Finchem, Kern and Gosar subsequently petitioned the Arizona Supreme Court for review. The justices sent the case back to the appeals court for reconsideration in light of a May 2024 decision in Arizona Republican Party v. Richer, in which the justices reversed sanctions against the Arizona Republican Party in a 2020 election challenge. That decision clarified what constitutes bringing a case "without substantial justification." Under Arizona statute, a claim is "without substantial justification" if it is both "groundless and is not made in good faith," according to the Court of Appeal's decision, filed on Feb. 11. In its May 2024 decision, the Arizona Supreme Court said that "long shot" cases are not necessarily groundless. A "claim may lack winning merit without being sufficiently devoid of rational support to render it groundless," the justices wrote. Applying this precedent, the Court of Appeals wrote that a losing claim is not necessarily groundless if it is "fairly debatable," as was the case with Finchem, Kern and Gosar's lawsuit. Although the men's claim against Fernandez was ultimately without merit, the Court of Appeals wrote, "the level of examination required to determine that" meant the defamation claim was "fairly debatable" and therefore not groundless. Therefore, attorney's fees as a sanction were not justified, the appeal court said.
Yahoo
12-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Appeals court nixes $75K fee award in GOP Jan. 6 defamation case
Photo by Krisanapong Detraphiphat | Getty Images The Arizona Court of Appeals reversed an earlier decision to award attorney fees to a former Democratic state lawmaker who was sued by GOP elected officials who said she had defamed them by connecting them to the violence of the Jan. 6 insurrection. State Sen. Mark Finchem, U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar and former state legislator Anthony Kern were ordered in 2022 to pay $75,000 in attorney fees to former Yuma Democratic legislator Charlene Fernandez, But in a ruling Tuesday, the Arizona Court of Appeals reversed that decision. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX In February 2021, the three Republicans filed a lawsuit against Fernandez claiming that she defamed them by signing onto a letter with other Democratic state lawmakers asking the FBI to investigate the three men's connections to Jan. 6. They did not sue the 43 other Democratic legislators who also signed the letter. A trial court judge, and later the state appellate court, ordered the three men to pay Fernandez's legal fees because the lawsuit 'was groundless and not made in good faith.' The Republicans had appealed to the Arizona Supreme Court, which sent it back to the Court of Appeals for reconsideration. That's because the high court in 2024 significantly limited the circumstances in which courts can order plaintiffs to pay attorneys' fees for their opponents. In that case, which centered on the Arizona Republican Party's 2020 lawsuit challenging post-election hand-count procedures, the Supreme Court said that lower courts had been too quick to conflate 'long shot' legal arguments with 'groundless' and bad faith arguments. That ruling set a new standard for how courts are to determine what 'not made in good faith' means as it relates to sanctions. The new standard is that a claim must both be groundless and the plaintiff knows it is groundless — or is indifferent to that fact — and pursues it anyway. Rather than evaluate 'good faith' with a subjective standard and 'groundlessness' with an objective standard, the Supreme court ruled, courts should use the standard set in the Arizona Rule of Civil Procedures to evaluate whether a claim is made in good faith. In the Finchem, Gosar and Kern case, the Court of Appeals was tasked with applying that methodology to Fernandez's request for attorney's fees. The three-judge panel unanimously ruled against her claim. 'We deny her request because Plaintiff's appeal of the superior court's fee award was successful and therefore not brought 'without substantial justification,'' the court said in its ruling. The court still found that the suit brought by Finchem, Gosar and Kern was 'meritless' and it should have been dismissed. 'Given that the January 2021 letter did not allege that Plaintiffs personally participated in the events of January 6, but merely requested an investigation into their involvement, Fernandez's failure to further investigate on her own was reasonable,' the ruling said, adding that the lawsuit asked the court to rely on 'hypothetical facts.' While Finchem and Kern have both downplayed their involvement with the events leading up to Jan. 6, both men were present at the Capitol that day during the violence that occurred. Footage reviewed by the Arizona Mirror has shown that Finchem was closer to the Capitol than he said he was, and he was recorded on the Capitol grounds while violent clashes with police were still ongoing. Finchem has insisted that he never got within 500 yards of the Capitol building, but Getty footage of the failed attempt to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden's election shows Finchem walking directly in front of the east steps at the Capitol after pro-Trump rioters had already broken through a series of barricades and police lines, and then smashed their way into the Capitol building. Kern, too, was much closer to the Capitol on that day than he claimed. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
