Fired prosecutor April Sponsel suspended from practicing law for 2 years
Former Maricopa County prosecutor April Sponsel, who was fired last year after wrongfully charging 15 social justice protesters, has had her law license suspended for two years.
Sponsel was one of four attorneys in the Maricopa County Attorney's Office assigned to a First Responders Bureau, created to prosecute alleged crimes against first responders like police officers.
After the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd and the Arizona Department of Public Safety killing of Dion Johnson, "MCAO received hundreds of charge submittals from law enforcement arising out of local protests," according to the disciplinary hearing panel's written decision suspending Sponsel.
Sponsel took the lead on pursuing felony prosecution against the protesters.
The disciplinary hearing panel found that police reports related to an Oct. 17, 2020, protest that led to the arrest of 18 people had "'cut and paste' characteristics, including carried-forward misspellings, undeleted template prompts such as 'name,' and substantially identical verbiage."
Of those arrested, Sponsel charged 15 people with three felonies: riot, hindering prosecution and aggravated assault.
The hearing panel found Sponsel "cavalierly dismissed" exculpatory evidence, did not review important video evidence, wrongly accused a man of possessing "ANTIFA paraphernalia" and rushed the cases to a grand jury.
Amy Kaper, one of the protesters who was arrested, told the hearing panel the experience had led her to believe the legal system is "so much worse than I ever could have imagined," according to the hearing panel's decision. She lost a job because of her arrest and suffered from PTSD because of the ordeal, the decision states.
"So much dirtier, and more insidious, and backwards, and evil than I could have ever, ever imagined," Kaper said, according to the decision.
Read the report: Disciplinary hearing panel's report on former Maricopa County prosecutor April Sponsel
The hearing panel also found Sponsel worked with police to fabricate the "ACAB" gang and bring criminal street gang charges against protesters, which the Maricopa County Attorney's Office had never done before.
The three-person panel quoted County Attorney Rachel Mitchell, who testified that Sponsel's grand jury presentation against protesters was "outrageous." The panel said the evidence presented to them supported Mitchell's assessment.
"Ms. Sponsel may not have intended to indict an innocent man," the hearing panel wrote of one of the people charged, "but the evidence establishes that she did so."
When presented with evidence contradicting the charges against the protesters, Sponsel did not take the time to give it an objective examination, the hearing panel found.
"Viewed in totality, the record clearly and convincingly establishes a rush to file gang charges against the October 17 defendants that were unsupported by adequate or competent evaluation of available facts and evidence and without reasoned consideration of each individual's conduct," the disciplinary hearing panel found. "Even after the indictments, Ms. Sponsel did not competently or diligently evaluate the evidence or competently and diligently reassess the existence of 'a reasonable likelihood of conviction' (the applicable standard per MCAO policy) as to each individual."
The County Attorney's Office ended up dismissing all the charges.
The hearing panel found Sponsel violated multiple ethical conduct rules. Her two-year suspension is effective 60 days from Tuesday.
"Ms. Sponsel violated duties owed to her client, to members of the public, to the legal system, and to the profession," the hearing panel wrote in its decision, finding her conduct "had far-reaching, deleterious consequences."
Sponsel will have to pay the State Bar's costs incurred in the proceedings.
Ernest Calderon, a lawyer representing Sponsel, said that because the case is ongoing, "it would be premature to comment."
Paying up: Maricopa County will pay to defend against Bar complaint involving prosecutor it fired
Reach the reporter at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Lawyer who filed gang charges against protestors has license suspended