Two Arizona reporters have received a $3.75 million settlement because they were falsely arrested in 2007 by Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The Phoenix New Times reports that their co-founders "Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin were taken from their homes in the middle of the night and jailed on misdemeanor charges alleging that they violated the secrecy of a grand jury -- which turned out never to have been convened."
Two-and-a-half years after the paper published the sheriff's address as part of an investigation into the sheriff's commercial real estate transactions, Arpaio and Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas "collaborated to appoint Phoenix attorney Dennis Wilenchik as a 'special prosecutor' to go after the paper. He issued grand jury subpoenas for the notes, records, and sources of the paper's reporters and editors for all Arpaio-related stories over a broad period of time, as well as for the IP addresses of New Times' readers of such stories," according to the New Times.
Lawyer and Legal Journalist
