Supreme Court turns down Arpaio, who vows fight to vacate conviction
Cronkite News
WASHINGTON – Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio vowed Monday to continue the fight to clear his name of a criminal contempt of court conviction, after the Supreme Court rejected his challenge of an appeals court ruling.
“The battle continues, I am not surrendering,” Arpaio said Monday after the high court, without comment, refused to intervene in his case, which now returns to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for hearing.
Monday’s ruling is the latest in a twisted saga surrounding Arpaio’s 2017 conviction of criminal contempt of court for his department’s racial profiling of suspects.
The case began in 2013, when U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow ordered Arpaio and his deputies to stop a policy of detaining people merely because of their race, in an attempt to find undocumented immigrants. But the policy continued, and U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton found Arpaio guilty of criminal contempt in July 2017 for violating Snow’s court order.
“Not only did Defendant (Arpaio) abdicate responsibility, he announced to the world and to his subordinates that he was going to continue business as usual no matter who said otherwise,” Bolton wrote.
![](https://www.indianz.com/News/2018/10/11/joearpaio.jpg)
Wilenchik said he was not surprised by the high court’s decision, adding that “it’s not the most important issue in the world.” He said the 9th Circuit’s order “remains a sloppy terrible decision that doesn’t make sense. But unfortunately the Supreme Court just doesn’t have time to correct the 9th Circuit’s mistakes.” The case now goes back to the appeals court. “It doesn’t matter, we’ll fight it out at the appellate court,” Arpaio said. For more stories from Cronkite News, visit cronkitenews.azpbs.org. This story originally appeared on Cronkite News and is published via a Creative Commons license. Cronkite News is produced by the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.#Indigenous peoples shout "This is our land" an hour ahead of Trumps Phoenix rally pic.twitter.com/8teXyR0b8D
— Jenni Monet (@jennimonet) August 23, 2017
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