To hear Barnett Lotstein tell it, ex-Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Peyton Thomas was willing to sacrifice his political career in order to do the right thing by going after alleged "corruption" in county governmentMore >>

We'll be chiming in soon with our take about the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling yesterday that upheld the inadmissibility of the 1991 confession of Buddhist temple mass murderer Johnathan Doody.

 

Killer Johnathan Doody gets a new trial--and the jury won't hear his 1991 confession.

​The effect of the high court's decision will be that Doody gets a retrial, and jurors won't be hearing his critical and highly controverted confession to Maricopa County sheriff's detectives.

Anyone who was around the state of Arizona back then will remember this terrible case well:

Doody, who was 17 at the time, was convicted with another young man in the execution-style killings of six Buddhist monks, a nun and two novice monks at the Wat Promkunaram Temple in the western reaches of Maricopa County. He has been serving nine life sentences at the Arizona State Prison.

Doody's accomplice was Alessandro Garcia, who testified against his onetime pal at trial in return for escaping a possible death penalty, and is serving a 271-year sentence.

For sure, the Temple Murders Case (as it came to be known) remains one of the most infamous cases in Arizona history.

In part, that was because four innocent men (the so-called Tucson Four) confessed to the crimes after being badgered endlessly by Maricopa County sheriff's detectives and were careening toward trial when evidence of the true killers emerged.

 

 

 

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Seems that everywhere we went yesterday, everyone wanted to discuss the surprise acquittal of Florida's Casey Anthony, who went from facing the death penalty to the cusp of being set free into a world that hates everything about her. More >>

An eight-person jury is to start deliberations today in a difficult case involving a suicidal Phoenix woman and a national right-to-die organization. More >>

Volney Douglas

Reddit users helped out 5-year-old Sagan Douglas

​On March 12, Chandler resident Volney Douglas went to the Internet with a problem -- someone had stolen a $3,500 device that helps his 5-year-old son Sagan communicate.

 

The family had just purchased the ALT-Chat device for Sagan, who has cerebral palsy and autism spectrum disorder, before thieves broke into Douglas' truck outside of his Chandler home and stole the device.

That's when Douglas went to the news aggregation and general discussion site reddit.com for help.

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​When the near-1,000-foot fence went up in the middle of the University of Arizona campus Monday, it seemed like an obvious message for a university that's about an hour's drive from the Mexican border -- a cry against U.S. immigration policy.

That's not exactly the case, as photos and observations of the fence sent in to New Times tell a slightly different story.

Sure, the fence was littered with posters depicting displeasure for the U.S.-Mexico border fence, but there are a healthy number of other messages promoted on the fence -- calls for worldwide human rights, complaints and statistics regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and even promotion of animal rights.

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CNN

Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck.

​Co-founder of the Innocence Project Barry Scheck is coming to ASU tomorrow for a talk about the project's work and forensic science reform in the justice system, an emerging topic in Arizona.

Scheck's seminar is scheduled to go from 5 to 6:30 at the ASU Art Museum.

The Innocence Project investigates cases where DNA testing might prove a person is innocent of crimes they were convicted of. To date, they count 267 exonerations nationwide, including 3 in Arizona: Ray "Snaggletooth" Krone, Larry Youngblood, and John Kenneth Watkins. By contrast, Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions counts non-DNA exonerations in their tally, and their total comes out to 16 Arizona cases.

Several universities across the country host local versions of innocence projects. The Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at ASU runs the Arizona Justice Project, which takes cases involving manifest injustice in addition to those of actual innocence. Tomorrow's topic -- forensic science reform -- will likely touch on issues raised by a new Arizona Attorney General DNA-testing program and the December exoneration of John Kenneth Watkins.

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www.lapprogressive.com

Congressman Raul Grijalva is NOT running for Senate.

​There's good news: Congressman Raul Grijalva won't be running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Senator Jon Kyl. He also says there's a "distinct possibility" that Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords will mount a Senate campaign.

Grijalva, as you may recall, encouraged people to boycott all things Arizona after Governor Jan Brewer signed SB 1070 -- Arizona's controversial immigration law -- which was good for nobody, regardless of how you feel about the law. In other words, it was a dick move and news that this stooge won't be running for Senate is a relief, to say the least.

As for his assertion that there's a "distinct possibility" Giffords could potentially run for the seat: too soon, bubba.

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www.loveme.com

What are the odds this woman doesn't speak this guy's language?

​Fox 10 (KPAZ) reported last night that the "business of love" is "booming" in these hard times -- in the form of increased mail-order "relationships."

Who says romance is dead?

(See the Fox 10 video below).

The TV station focused its report on local pimps matchmakers who run a Web site called "A Foreign Affair," hosted at the cringe-worthy loveme.com.

Their site offers what it calls "romance tours" to countries like the Philippines, Thailand, and Ukraine, that last anywhere from eight to 22 days and offer a smorgasbord of starving women desperate to escape their countries women looking for soulmates.

In addition, the group sells "Foreign Bride 101" instruction PDFs, which are "A How to For Nice Guys," and a "Do It Yourself Fiancee Visa Kit."

Here at New Times, we hope you enjoyed your fake holiday Valentine's Day yesterday, preferably with a woman you met in the first world, or at least without searching through an online database.

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​Phoenix police reported that there were 358 kidnapping calls in their community during 2008, and that a majority of them were linked to drug and human smuggling across the Arizona-Mexico border.

In recent months, Phoenix police union leaders have raised questions about the veracity of those statistics. And while they promulgate doubt, City Manager David Cavazos, Police Chief Jack Harris and Mayor Phil Gordon continue to dismiss concerns that kidnapping statistics are inaccurate or intentionally inflated. 

A New Times analysis of 264 of the 358 reported kidnappings shows that only about one out of every four incidents labeled as kidnappings in 2008 appeared connected to border-related crimes.

Chief Harris had agreed to discuss the kidnapping statistics with New Times, but a few days later, a police spokesman said that Harris was going to pass on the interview. 

Police officials say they aren't commenting because of an ongoing audit of those statistics by the Department of Justice's Office of Inspector General.

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