On Friday President Donald Trump pardoned the Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio from a jail sentence after he was convicted of criminal contempt related to his hard-line tactics for going after undocumented immigrants. The sheriff was said to be practicing racial-profiling in Arizona, during which Arpaio was ordered to stop targeting Latinos for traffic stops and detention. Who is the Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio and who did he become the “toughest sheriff”? Arpaio, who first took office in 1993, rose to national prominence for his crackdown on illegal immigration, earning the nickname "America's toughest sheriff" along the way. He cultivated that reputation, and as Bolton's order makes clear, he was not going to let anyone tell him what to do. Bolton's decision arose from a finding of civil contempt by US District Court Judge G. Murray Snow in the racial-profiling case of Melendres v. Arpaio, first filed in 2007. Beginning in 2011, Snow ordered Arpaio to stop detaining people based simply on a belief that they were in the country illegally, rather than
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Trump's pardon of Arpaio is the earliest a president has pardoned someone in his first term since George H.W. Bush pardoned nine individuals on August 14, 1989. Bill Clinton waited almost two years before issuing a pardon. George W. Bush and Barack Obama both waited about a year. Presidents have generally waited until late in their term to issue pardons. Another was procedure. Although the final choice is of course the president’s, usually the Justice Department’s special pardons division prepares an advisory review of the merits of each case. This time Trump apparently just blasted ahead. Usually the recipient of a pardon has either begun serving time or has exhausted his or her appeals. In this case, Joe Arpaio had been convicted, but appeals had not even
Trump's pardon of Arpaio is the earliest a president has pardoned someone in his first term since George H.W. Bush pardoned nine individuals on August 14, 1989. Bill Clinton waited almost two years before issuing a pardon. George W. Bush and Barack Obama both waited about a year. Presidents have generally waited until late in their term to issue pardons. Another was procedure. Although the final choice is of course the president’s, usually the Justice Department’s special pardons division prepares an advisory review of the merits of each case. This time Trump apparently just blasted ahead. Usually the recipient of a pardon has either begun serving time or has exhausted his or her appeals. In this case, Joe Arpaio had been convicted, but appeals had not even