"Egregious Violation of the Ethics Rules"

Here is a complaint against Mr. Thomas filed with the State Bar of Arizona by the Arizona Attorneys for Criminal Justice (AACJ). I dont know a whole lot about this group other than it is comprised of over 400 defense attorneys in Arizona. I include the complaint because it provides a helpful summary of the damage that Mr. Thomas has done to Maricopa County government over the last few years. There is plenty of puplic record to support the facts in the AACJ complaint.

http://www.aacj.org/resources/uploads/FINAL_THOMAS_BAR_COMPLAINT_April_2010_(2).pdf

Here is another summary, this time from the American Bar Association.

http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/the_maricopa_courthouse_war/

Why should you care? Isn't this just lawyer on lawyer violence and aren't they all a bunch of scoundrels? Actually you should care. You should care because good public servants have suffered and paid a terrible price. You should care because Maricopa County has become dysfunctional at such a critical time. You should care because limited financial resources are being wasted at an alarming rate. Perhaps most of all, you should care because a prosecutor, with a sacred duty to uphold the law and promote justice, has threatened and intimidated judges who are supposed to make impartial decisions every day about people's lives.

You see Mr. Thomas has sued every member of the Maricopa County board (some of them more than once). He has sued 4 judges (1 of them more than once). Many of these lawsuits have been dismissed or thrown out and those remaining are a sham and will be dismissed. They serve no other purpose than to intimidate and cause harm to the defendants. They together paint a picture of outrageous abuse of power by an elected public official.

Why does he do it? What would cause Mr. Thomas to violate the public trust? As Mr. Thomas’ spokesman, Barnett Lotstein, said “This isn’t a personal thing with Thomas...This is like in The Godfather—this is business, not personal.” He does it because he can. He is a young man who is experiencing power for the first time in his life and he has become intoxicated with it. Well he has failed at his first big test in public life. He gets an F for integrity, an F for honesty and an F for responsibility. He has been a spectacular failure as Maricopa County Attorney.