PHOENIX — Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell testified that she decided to fire a high-profile prosecutor because of a pattern of overcharging defendants, ignoring evidentiary concerns, and making outrageous claims to grand juries.
During the third day of the State Bar of Arizona’s disciplinary trial against April Sponsel, Mitchell laid out the problems with her cases and the shame she brought on the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.
“In terms of the loss of reputation and morale (to MCAO), I don’t know how to quantify that,” said Mitchell.
The State Bar is seeking to suspend Sponsel’s law license for two years with a key focus of their case on her prosecution of protesters in 2020. In the most troubling example, Sponsel worked with Phoenix police to invent a gang and falsely charge a group of demonstrators as members.
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The false charges originated under the leadership of former County Attorney Allister Adel, who died in 2022.
Mitchell was appointed as her interim replacement and was later elected to the position.
The county attorney said she never directly supervised Sponsel and was not involved in initial reviews about the gang protest case.
But during the fallout from the scandal, Mitchell said she was assigned to review some of Sponsel’s other protest prosecutions, including the controversial case against activist Bruce Franks Jr.
Mitchell, who was a division chief at the time, said she found Sponsel had overcharged Franks and other defendants and presented inaccurate and exaggerated information to a grand jury in order to secure criminal charges.
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It’s a pattern the State Bar and Mitchell allege in the gang protest case and others.
“There were several instances where she was being told, ‘You don’t have the evidence, the body cameras don’t match what you’ve charged these people with,’” said Mitchell who testified during the disciplinary trial. “That’s a run, don’t walk, to your nearest computer monitor to review it, and that didn’t happen.”
The county attorney also said the case presented to the grand jury about the protest gang case was “outrageous” and that during an internal investigation, Sponsel was defiant and didn’t see anything wrong with her conduct.
Sponsel’s attorney, Ernie Calderon, questioned Mitchell about whether she knew that several of Sponsel’s supervisors approved of her plan of how to prosecute protesters.
Mitchell denied any advance knowledge or involvement in the cases.
RELATED: Top prosecutor testifies he told Adel about protest gang case
In an earlier hearing, Vince Goddard, a former MCAO division chief, said he signed off on the case and directly informed Adel about the charges at the outset of the case.
Goddard resigned in 2021 during the fallout of the scandal and now works at the Pinal County Attorney’s Office.
During the hearing, Mitchell also testified that the protest scandal prompted a new policy inside MCAO that requires prosecutors to review body camera footage, if it’s available, before proceeding with charges.
Contact ABC15 Chief Investigator Dave Biscobing at Dave@ABC15.com.
