It wasn’t even a sellout at the Wells Fargo Arena last night for the rivalry game between the ASU Sun Devils and the Arizona Wildcats, and probably with good reason. The Wildcats do have a very nice team in this, their rebound year after missing the NCAA tournament for…
Assistant public defender Jeffrey Kirchler tried to suggest at Faleh Almaleki’s murder trial yesterday that the lead detective in the case invented the “honor killing” angle that turned this Maricopa County case into an international sensation. …
So, according to Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, armed conflict between his deputies and members of the Mexican drug cartels are imminent, probably “in the next 30 to 60 days.” Yet, on the heels of that prediction, here’s a concurrent story in which Alan Bersin, the head of the federal Customs…
As the jury trial of accused daughter-killer Faleh Almaleki moves toward its conclusion, one thing is certain. The 12-person panel will find the 50-year-old Glendale resident guilty of one degree of homicide or another. The real question inside Superior Court Judge Roland Steinle’s courtroom: Can Almaleki’s defense team somehow convince…
One of the very best college basketball games of the season aired on Saturday night, ending with the Arizona Wildcats nipping the Cal Golden Bears 107-105 in three thrilling overtimes. Saturday night’s road win made it a rare sweep of the Bay Area schools (Cal and Stanford), and kept the…
There were momentous happenings in men’s Pac-10 basketball as the conference’s second half got under way last night with the Arizona teams on the road in the Bay Area. For starters, the Arizona Wildcats took over sole possession of first place by virtue of a tough win over the Stanford…
Amal Khalaf, the woman who survived after getting crushed by a Jeep Cherokee driven by accused murderer Faleh Almaleki, took the witness stand late this morning in downtown Phoenix. Speaking through an Arabic translator, Khalaf testified dramatically about the circumstances that led to the November 2009 incident outside a Peoria…
We suspect that Allen probably would help most anyone (well, probably not an undocumented immigrant) out with a bite to eat if he or she knocked on her front door and asked nicely. But, Jeez, the quotes from this elected official in this morning’s Arizona Republic are cold-blooded enough to make…
The Arizona Wildcats and ASU Sun Devils men’s basketball teams have at least a few things in common this season–they both are well-coached (by Sean Miller and Herb Sendek, respectively) and play hard from the opening tip until the final horn. Unfortunately, at least for the Devils, the resemblance…
This has been quite a year for Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, the onetime Massachusetts headmaster who reinvented himself as a cop out here in the desert in the early 2000s.Babeu became ubiquitous on national Fox News programs, especially after the high-profile and increasingly controversial April 2010 shooting incident involving…
Two men’s college basketball teams going in opposite directions at the moment, those being the Arizona Wildcats and the Arizona State Sun Devils. We watched the Cats break open a tight game against the formidable UCLA Bruins last night on ESPN-2, coming away with an 85-74 win in what seemed…
So, a new batch of thousands of mentally ill Arizonans are going to lose most, if not all of their current benefits (counseling, transportation, etc.), ostensibly because of the state’s ongoing fiscal crisis. We wrote about the dire situation a few weeks ago in “Hindsight,” and would rather leave a…
Last weekend’s Pac-10 Washington trip for the ASU Sun Devils and Arizona Wildcats proved oddly upbeat for the local schools, considering that they returned to the desert with but one win in the four games played. Yes, a loss is a loss is a loss, but ASU acquitted itself pretty well…
Faleh Almaleki sat between his attorneys in court on Monday afternoon, listening through an Arabic interpreter to Deputy County Attorney Laura Reckart rip him up. “What could be more dishonorable than a father ripping away the life of his own flesh and blood?” Reckart told the 16-member jury (four…
It was an upbeat event, yesterday’s investiture ceremony in downtown Phoenix for incoming Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Douglas Gerlach. Presiding county judge Norm Davis led the Pledge of Allegiance and Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Rebecca White Berch administered the Oath of Office to the onetime ASU sports broadcaster,…
I was standing at the border “fence” down in Palominas last spring chatting with John Ladd Jr., an articulate and outspoken cattle rancher with no love for the federal government, Barack Obama, or anything with the phrase “illegal immigrant” attached to it. I was reporting this story, “Badlands,” which took…
Terrible and strange weekend that it was, life (by which we mean sports) didn’t stop because of the Tucson massacre, what with the National Football League wild-card and Pacific-10 basketball games carrying on as scheduled. We’re here to talk about the Arizona schools and how they fared at home against…
The best thing that happened to Louie Puroll and the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office yesterday was the standoff out at the Chandler Mall, a made-for-TV incident that put the deputy’s firing deep into second place, news-wise. Still, by now everyone who follows local news knows Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu…
Saw an Associated Press report this morning noting that Faleh Al-Maleki, the Iraqi native accused in the October 2009 so-called “honor killing” of his daughter Noor may be plea bargaining on the cusp of his scheduled trial. Al-Maleki’s murder trial is set to start later this month, but the AP reports…
Sources inside the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office say Sheriff Paul Babeu is prepared to fire controversial deputy Louie Puroll tomorrow. These sources say that an internal affairs investigation sustained all of the allegations against Puroll stemming from a series of wide-ranging interviews I conducted with the deputy in the aftermath…
Jim Keppel, a veteran prosecutor and retired Superior Court judge who returned to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office to help out after Andy Thomas resigned last year, spent his first day at his new job yesterday, running the criminal division of the Office of the Arizona Attorney General. …
We got a chance to watch a lot of basketball on TV over the holiday, between, of course, doing chores and “catching up” with stuff around the house. We especially were interested in the start of the Pacific-10 basketball race, and what we expect will be a topsy-turvy season with…
