Breathtaking Abuse of the Constitution

The Arizona Rules of Professional Conduct are unequivocal: "A lawyer shall not communicate ex-parte with such a person (judge, juror, prospective juror) during the proceeding . . ."

Were it not for Judge Anna Baca's impeccable character, her willingness to short-circuit the conversation with friend Carol Turoff at the same time that she made a record of the approach, Wilenchik's brazen tactic would never have surfaced.

And yet he remains the special prosecutor.

There will be many questions about our decision to make public the secret machinations of the special prosecutor armed with grand jury powers.

Consider this: When the wife of a senior member of County Attorney Andrew Thomas' management team feels free to contact the sitting judge, and when the special prosecutor who initiated this idea of an ex-parte meeting sees nothing wrong with conduct his own profession prohibits, we feel compelled to shed light upon these remarkable proceedings.

And make no mistake: Special prosecutor Wilenchik sees nothing wrong with what he did.

Judge Baca told the prosecutor that it was "absolutely inappropriate."

"With all due respect," argued Dennis Wilenchik, "it was absolutely appropriate."

It is little wonder that special prosecutor Wilenchik found nothing inappropriate about his ex parte contact with Judge Baca; his instinct to engage in subversive tactics underscores his lack of professional ethics.

On October 3, precisely one week before Turoff phoned Judge Baca, Wilenchik smeared Superior Court Judge Timothy Ryan in an orchestrated campaign that is part of County Attorney Thomas' anti-illegal immigration strategy.

National media are now writing about GOP efforts to mount a Rovian campaign to embarrass Democrats who are not strident enough in their willingness to crack down on illegal aliens. But County Attorney Thomas mounted such attacks from the earliest moments of his initial campaign for office.

The latest outburst directed at the Maricopa County Superior Court is widely recognized as part of Thomas' preliminary salvos in an anticipated bid for the governor's office.

The attack on Judge Ryan, in which Wilenchik labeled the justice "a danger to public safety," grew out of the courts' efforts to deal with a recently enacted proposition that requires denial of bail to illegal aliens charged with certain felonies. Ryan and other judges are attempting to instill standards that law enforcement must meet in order to establish that a defendant is indeed an illegal alien.

It is hardly a trivial matter. This summer, Arpaio's jail denied admittance to Ramon Delgadillo, who'd worked 25 years as a court translator. Despite his extensive track record, the Sheriff's Office demanded papers that proved he was a naturalized citizen.

Although Arpaio was forced to change jail policy, the confusion underscored the need for coherent and reasonable guidelines while considering bail for suspected illegal aliens.

Wilenchik addressed the issue with such outlandish hostility that there were immediate calls for complaints to be filed against him with the state Bar.

Although Wilenchik's role as hired gun was highlighted by his inability to answer questions from Judge Ryan about the cases in dispute, he nonetheless attacked the judge's questions as "self-serving."

Tellingly, County Attorney Thomas, though unhappy with certain rulings and conduct of Judge Ryan, neither appealed the decisions in question nor asked for judicial review, which are the legal routes for redress.

Instead, members of the news media were notified in advance that they should attend a hearing in Judge Ryan's court. At the hearing, Wilenchik made the incredible demand that Ryan step down from all cases.

Rather than proceeding through normal legal channels, Wilenchik's ad hominem attack marked the beginning of a three-day public assault on the courts by Thomas, highlighted by the grandstanding demand that all 93 judges in Maricopa County be replaced by out-of-county judges.

The presiding judge of the county Superior Court, Barbara Mundell, denied the motion, noting that "no facts to establish bias or prejudice of any, and certainly not all of the 93 judges" was put into evidence.

Still pending, as we went to press, was the effort to remove Judge Ryan individually.

Lost in Wilenchik and Thomas' tactics were the people involved in the cases. As Judge Mundell noted, all the victims, witnesses, and defendants would have suffered unnecessary hardships and delays under Wilenchik's preposterous motion.

Of course, the idea to strike Judge Ryan and his 92 colleagues in Superior Court was pursued with little regard for legal victory but maximum regard for publicity value. And the execution of this media ploy was both heavy-handed and vicious, playing fast and loose with anti-immigrant prejudices.

The same kind of heavy-handed unscrupulousness by Wilenchik was reported by New Times reporter Paul Rubin in the lawyer's recent defamation defense of Sheriff Joe Arpaio ("Below the Belt," September 20).

In the 2004 election, Arpaio's office leaked the accusation that the sheriff's opponent, Dan Saban, now Buckeye's police chief, had raped his adoptive mom 30 years earlier.