The disciplinary court of the State Bar of Arizona concluded Tuesday against April Sponsel, a former longtime prosecutor with the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office (MCAO). The action was related to gang charges she brought against Antifa and others arrested in October 2020 for rioting in downtown Phoenix.
Bar prosecutors claimed she overcharged the rioters by using gang statutes, including bringing charges against a man who claimed he was just an observer taking photos, Ryder Collins. The Arizona Bar seeks to suspend her license to practice law for two years.
A prosecutor for the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office told The Arizona Sun Times that the Phoenix Police Department decided to crack down on individuals participating in the 2020 riots with gang charges instead of just a slap on the wrist. The attorney noted that law enforcement in Utah took the same approach, and nothing happened there.
Phoenix Police officers arrested 18 rioters on October 17, 2020, in downtown Phoenix.
Sponsel maintains that there was no evidence produced showing that Collins wasn’t part of the gang or that he wasn’t assisting them by taking photos. Collins admitted that he refused to cooperate with police. His photos were taken in the middle of the street after the police had told the rioters to move. The top brass in the office, including then-Maricopa County Attorney Alistair Adel, knew that Sponsel was charging the rioters with gang charges, which was discussed in a meeting. However, the Arizona Bar isn’t going after anyone else.
The prosecutor opined that pressure from the media articles influenced Adel and others, causing them to drop the charges. MCAO placed Sponsel on leave and then fired her after 18 years of service, accusing her of “extreme overcharging.” In response to putting her on leave, two of her superiors resigned in disgust.
The lawyer, who is familiar with the matter told The Sun Times that once the Arizona Bar decided to go after Sponsel, MCAO leadership dug into Sponsel’s 18 years of cases on a “fishing expedition.” The attorney said they found typical things you might find in any prosecutor’s case files, such as “didn’t disclose information fast enough,” and noted that the county sent five cases like that to the bar.
The experienced attorney watched the disbarment trial and told The Sun Times that Arizona Bar is “withholding evidence” and only presenting one side of the story. All the video of the rioting has not been released to the public.
“We would be disbarred as a prosecutor if we presented what they did,” the lawyer quipped.
MCAO hired a criminal street gang expert independently of Sponsel, Clint Davis, who looked into the charges and agreed with Sponsel that they were valid.
Sponsel put together a PowerPoint presentation for her superiors at the office to explain the gang charges. It included a screenshot of one of the activists’ Facebook page cover photo, which was a meme that stated, “Riot 2020 Burn this m*********** down.” The PowerPoint presentation said the rioters were from Antifa, Black Lives Matter, We Rising, and Bruce Franks Group. It listed many of them by their names, nicknames, and physical descriptions.
Riley Behrens, a rioter who was charged as a co-conspirator, cooperated and provided some information to investigators, which was included in the PowerPoint presentation.
Behrens said, “These guys don’t care about felonies. They don’t work and are living off unemployment and getting the extra money from the government COVID distribution. The protesters that are employed reportedly work for different political campaigns.”
Behrens added, “They talked about going to Lowe’s parking lot and popping all the north side’s (Back the Blue) tires while they are on the corner protesting. Popping two tires because one tire they can put on a spare and three tires insurance pays. So pop only 2 tires.”
“They have gotten extreme,” Behrens said.
Another rioter who cooperated, Jessica Burke, said a new wave of younger protesters has been showing up with bats, shields, guns, and helmets.
The PowerPoint presentation said text messages from one of the Antifa member’s phone revealed calls for violence and disclosed the addresses of law enforcement officers and elected officials. One of the members in that group chat said they intended to go to the residence of officers, including the Phoenix Police Department Police Chief, as well as the Phoenix Mayor’s residence, and “don’t mind getting arrested.”
She said she’d protested “quite a bit” before and had been arrested. She added that it was important to have someone observe and film the police, to “record cop activity that could benefit a lawsuit.”
The PowerPoint presentation included radio traffic recorded by the police, which contained a discussion of the rioters moving barricades into the streets, blocking traffic despite warnings from the police, and throwing a smoke bomb and two gas projectiles at the police. One officer said a barricade damaged his patrol car and that a photographer dressed all in black was with them.
The 30 to 40 Antifa members were called the “Book Club,” a name they used to disguise their group on Facebook. Sponsel referred to Antifa in her presentation as ACAB, an acronym the local group went by, which means All Cops Are B****rds. Some Antifa members had tattoos that spelled ACAB in braille. They spray-painted ACAB on buildings and the ground.
The PowerPoint presentation went over several of the Antifa members in detail, individually showcasing their arrests with photos of them, their violent paraphernalia and gear, ACAB tattoos, the damage, details of their arrests such as resisting arrest, and more. One rioter had guns with extra magazines.
Behrens refused to follow police commands and said two of the women brought smoke bombs to throw at the police. Another rioter dug his fingernails into a police officer’s thumb, drawing blood. A leader in the group resisted arrest and had a rock in his hoodie. One rioter tweeted, “I was actually having a good morning and now I’m about to choose violence.”
Big League Politics published an exposé on one of the gang leaders, Summayah Dawud, a transgender who had her concealed weapons permit revoked due to charges including aggravated assault on a police officer.
A.R.S. 13-105(7) defines a criminal street gang as a “formal or informal association of persons” that “individually or collectively engage in the commission, attempted commission, facilitation or solicitation of any felony act and that has at least one individual who is a criminal street gang member.” One of the charges against the rioters was “assisting a criminal street gang.”
The Arizona Bar has a history of targeting conservative attorneys. Conservative Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas was disbarred in 2012 after he denounced Maricopa County Superior Court judges for refusing to enforce a law he’d helped get passed: no bail for illegal immigrants who commit serious crimes. An Arizona Bar rule exists that prohibits attorneys from criticizing judges, ER 8.2, which many legal scholars believe violates the First Amendment’s right to free speech.
The Maricopa County Supervisors launched the investigation of Thomas after he tried to prosecute one of them for raising over $70,000 in a race for president of the National Association of County Supervisors where he had no opponent, and spent the money on luxury personal items instead.
Sponsel is being represented by Ernie Calderon, a Democrat and former president of the Arizona Bar who testified as an expert on behalf of Thomas in his disciplinary proceedings. In retaliation, the Arizona Bar removed him from his position representing them at American Bar Association meetings.
Numerous conservative election attorneys in the state are currently under investigation by the Arizona Bar for representing Republican candidates in election challenges alleging illegal election activities. Progressives started the 65 Project to file bar complaints against conservative election attorneys.
For her part, Sponsel received a plethora of awards and recognition for prosecuting gang cases while at MCAO in the nearly two decades there. According to The Arizona Republic, in a May 2020 employee evaluation, Sherry Leckrone, former chief of the First Responder’s Bureau, wrote, “April is the gold standard in how our bureau’s aims to service our officer/first responder victims. She has developed an amazing network of contacts and a stellar reputation with law enforcement. This is earned respect that stems from April’s constant professionalism.”
Sponsel filed a lawsuit against MCAO over the wrongful termination early last year. She alleged that Adel knew about her charging decision, so she wasn’t a rogue prosecutor and noted that only one other prosecutor in the entire office objected to the charges when she brought them. ABC 15 reported this was accurate; the station said it “discovered the former county attorney had kept tabs on protest cases throughout 2020 and knew about the gang charges in the days following the indictments.”
Current Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell stands by the decision to fire Sponsel and testified against her at the trial.
Sponsel turned down a settlement offer from the Arizona Bar, choosing to go to trial. The trial was live-streamed on YouTube and available on the ABC 15 page. Closing statements are due from the parties by November 17.
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter / X. Email tips to [email protected].
Image “April Sponsel” by ABC15 Arizona.
