The State Bar of Arizona’s disciplinary judge Margaret Downie, along with a hearing panel of two others, suspended the law license of longtime Maricopa County prosecutor April Sponsel on December 19 mainly for prosecuting multiple people at an Antifa riot that took place in downtown Phoenix on October 17, 2020 after the death of George Floyd. The 71-page Decision and Order Imposing Sanctions also faulted her decision to charge a thief accused of assaulting police officers. The Arizona bar has come under increasing criticism in recent years for targeting conservative attorneys.
The trial was held in October, with over 8,100 pieces of evidence, including documents and videos, and 30 witnesses testifying. In February 2021, then-Maricopa County Attorney Allister Adel made a decision to dismiss all the charges. ABC-15 credited their reporting with the reason for the dismissal. “On February 12, 2021, MCAO dismissed the gang charges against protesters following a week of intense scrutiny because of ABC15’s reporting,” the news site said. The station interviewed the rioters and portrayed them as peaceful protesters.
Sponsel was placed on administrative leave on March 2, 2021, and fired on June 28, 2022, accused of “a disturbing pattern of overcharging and a failure to review available evidence.”
Count One was related to her prosecution of two cases unrelated to the Antifa riot. The hearing panel found no ethical violations by Sponsel. Count Two related to her prosecution of several defendants arrested at Antifa riots and an unrelated defendant accused of stealing and assaulting a police officer.
The Phoenix Police Department (PPD) circulated a memo before the October 17, 2020 riot stating that the protesters intended to disrupt traffic, get arrested, and go to jail. The Arizona bar’s disciplinary counsel acknowledged that the protesters marched in the middle of the streets, moved traffic barricades into the street, carried umbrellas to shield their behavior, deployed at least two smoke bombs, and flashed lights at the police. One carried firearms. Officers ordered them to disperse and when they refused, arrested 18 of them.
The case was assigned to Sponsel. She charged 15 defendants with assisting a criminal street game, a class 3 felony, conspiracy, and rioting, hindering prosecution, and aggravated assault, all class 5 felonies.
One of those arrested was Ryder Collins, who said he was a nurse visiting from Prescott to take photos of downtown Phoenix at sunset. Sponsel maintained 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.
However, despite the admission by Collins, MCAO’s bar charges against Sponsel, which the disciplinary opinion cited as support for its decision to discipline her, referred to Collins as “completely innocent.”
The hearing panel said Riley Behrens, a woman who identifies as a man who chose to cooperate with the police, told the police that Collins wasn’t part of the rioters. However, Sponsel did not trust Behrens because she referred to Collins by his first name as if she knew him. Collins was incarcerated overnight and charged with rioting, obstructing a highway or public thoroughfare, and unlawful assembly.
Sponsel offered him a plea deal agreeing to a conviction of rioting and assisting a criminal street gang. Sponsel said in pleadings that the photos and videos in his camera were not of the Phoenix skyline, but only of the rioting, which contradicted his story that he was not a legal observer with Antifa. One of the police officers, a sergeant, believed he was a legal observer. She also said there was a “For Sale” sign in his camera case with “AMERIKKKA” on it, which was an Antifa sign. The hearing panel emphasized the fact that Sponsel was mistaken about the sign belonging to Collins, since it was discovered later that it belonged to a juvenile. However, when Sponsel discovered this, she corrected it at a hearing.
The hearing panel interpreted a confusing interview with the sergeant to mean he had misidentified Collins. The panel also said they did not find Sponsel credible when she said she did not learn of this misidentification until after she was placed on administrative leave.
Next, the opinion reported sympathetically about protesters Amy Kaper and Nathaniel Llanes a couple who found out about the protest in a social media post. Kaper, who describes herself as a “privileged white person,” was a federal government employee with a top-secret security clearance. She reportedly lost a previous job in the private sector due to her arrest, and Llanes lost his fingerprint clearance to work with the elderly and disabled. Sponsel offered Kaper and Llanes a plea deal of rioting and assisting a criminal street gang.
Kaper posted photos of her and Llanes’ mug shots in frames on her wall at home, and shared them on social media.
Sponsel attended a meeting with PPD after filing the charges, where Lt. Hester brought up filing gang charges against the rioters, and he testified later that some agreed but it was not a full agreement by everyone (which is not required). According to sources who were present at the meeting, Hester proposed the charges before Sponsel did, and everyone at the meeting was in agreement about bringing them.
The hearing panel noted that Antifa, which was referred to as ACAB in the pleadings (Antifa describes itself using that acronym, which means All Cops Are B****rds), was not found in the law enforcement database, and the Arizona Department of Public Safety later refused to classify the October 17 protesters as gang members. The Department of Justice began investigating PPD after the arrests drew intense media scrutiny. A gang does not need to be listed in the database in order to bring gang charges.
The hearing panel described the rioters as having a “relatively benign intent of ‘occupy[ing] the roadway.’” They said that Sponsel reviewed a section about the protesters from law enforcement titled “Gang Information,” pointing out that it had some blank spaces as if incomplete. However, it did not mention the lengthy Powerpoint presentation she created for her superiors which contained significant gang information about those arrested from what they were carrying to what behavior they engaged in.
The hearing panel repeatedly cited findings critical of the prosecutions from an independent investigation the City of Phoenix solicited from the progressive Ballard Spahr law firm. Many of those involved with the case, including Sponsel and PPD officers, were never interviewed by the firm.
The firm has a prominent page on its website which states, “Through the firm’s Racial Justice and Equality Initiative, we will identify and litigate pro bono cases that address racial injustice and inequity. We also will provide financial support to partner organizations engaged in tackling these issues. We join our clients and communities as they denounce racism, violence, and brutality in all its forms, endeavor to keep our communities safe from illness, and seek economic recovery.” Despite the firm’s position on these issues, the hearing panel did not find it a conflict of interest for the firm to conduct an independent investigation of the police.
Ballard Spahr also provides pro bono representation to assist election fraud deniers, and denounced election integrity legislation in Georgia. Its page devoted to ESG states, “Ballard Spahr was one of the first AmLaw 100 firms to appoint a C-level executive — reporting directly to the firm Chair — to focus exclusively on building a diverse workforce, ensuring equity, and removing obstacles to inclusion.” Additionally, under “Environmental Sustainability,” the firm’s site said, “We recognize the critical nature of climate change and strive to engage current best practices and find new ways to reduce our environmental footprint across offices.”
The disciplinary panel criticized Sponsel for comparing the Antifa members to “notoriously violent and well-known criminal street gangs, such as the Bloods and the Crips.” It cited MCAO’s Ethics Committee’s bar charge against, her, which also criticized the comparison since the rioters “had not committed any acts that were even remotely similar to the murderous conduct that has been committed by these notorious street gangs.” However, one of the associates of the Antifa rioters said he wanted to kill PPD Lt. Ben Moore.
Antifa members have murdered Americans. Michael Reinoehl, labeled in the media as a supporter of Antifa, shot and killed Aaron Danielson, a supporter of Patriot Prayer. Willem Van Spronsen attacked a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Tacoma, Washington, with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and attempted to ignite a 500-gallon propane tank.
After the death of Floyd, police arrested an alleged Antifa member in New Jersey for possessing a knife, a hatchet, and a jar of gasoline with intent to use violence. In Austin, Texas, law enforcement reported that Antifa was involved in violent activity, including looting a Target store. Weapons used by Antifa include bricks, pipes, hammers, homemade incendiary devices, clubs, shields, fists, chemical irritants, and balloons filled with paint and ink.
Much of the violence by Antifa has taken place in Portland, Oregon. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, a progressive, said in 2021, “The self-described anarchists who engage in regular criminal destruction don’t want things to open up to recover,” he said. “The city of Portland will not tolerate criminal destruction for violence. … They want to burn, they want to bash.” He declared a state of emergency for awhile.
The hearing panel quoted extensively from Sponsel’s supervisor Vince Goddard, discussing how to be careful about building cases against the defendants separately instead of treating them all the same. However, it doesn’t reveal that Goddard was not permitted to be part of the disciplinary process; he was informed after Sponsel was placed on administrative leave.
The disciplinary panel repeatedly stated that Sponsel did not review very much evidence about the October 17 riot, but failed to point out that Sponsel created the lengthy Powerpoint presentation for her superiors about each defendant.
Similarly, the opinion quoted another supervisor who was strangely cut out of the disciplinary process, Sherry Leckrone, discussing how defendants charged with lesser crimes who were out of custody were only handled at the same time for reasons of efficiency.
Much of the opinion nitpicked technical issues. For example, Sponsel said that some of the rioters had sharpened fingernails – since one of them scratched and caused bleeding on an officer – and said that was a tactic of Antifa. However, the opinion faulted Sponsel for not producing photos of the fingernails.
The hearing panel quoted several prosecutors in MCAO management who expressed skepticism about the charges. However, the top brass in the office, including Adel, knew that Sponsel was charging the rioters with gang charges, which was discussed in a meeting. The opinion repeatedly quoted current Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell criticizing Sponsel much later. The hearing panel claimed that “support for the charges evaporated” from her superiors after “accurate information was obtained,” but did not address what that information was, only to nitpick details and choose to believe certain statements from some people over others.
The hearing panel said that Sponsel should not have put on testimony from Officer Raymond during the grand jury proceeding, where Raymond stated that Collins ran towards officers in an attempt to impede their arrests of protesters, and didn’t respond to the first commands to step back.
The hearing panel criticized Sponsel for not admitting later that Collins was “innocent,” but saying instead that his role remained “undetermined.”
Finally, the hearing panel went over charges from the Arizona bar related to previous defendants Sponsel had prosecuted. A prosecutor for MCAO who is familiar with Sponsel’s tenure there and the disciplinary case told The Arizona 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.”
Two of the cases involved defendants Sponsel charged with violently coming after officers. One of them, Richard Villa, pushed back at fencing during a protest in August 2020 while officers were trying to put it into place. The second one, Charles Walker, was reportedly seen carrying a large pipe and was suspected of stealing sunglasses and a pen from CVS. An officer who confronted him ended up with a stabbing wound afterwards. The opinion nitpicked issues such as the fact Sponsel did not review the video footage of the issue. Sponsel said it would not have changed her decision to charge him. Sponsel was found to have violated multiple ethics rules for charging the two.
The ethics rules she was found to have violated were mainly broad and vague ones used to go after conservative attorneys, such as failing to provide “competent representation, E.R. 1.1; not acting with “reasonable diligence and promptness,” E.R. 1.3; failing to “expedite litigation,” E.R. 3.2; and engaging in “conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice, E.R. 8.4(d).
Sponsel has no prior disciplinary history. Although the court admitted that longtime Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sherry Stephens “praised Sponsel’s professionalism, diligence and integrity,” the panel said mitigating factors like that received less weight because Sponsel refused to apologize or admit she had done anything wrong.
A source familiar with the situation said Sponsel intends to appeal. Her appeal goes to the Arizona Supreme Court, which is known for reducing sentences imposed by the disciplinary judge. The previous disciplinary court judge, Democrat William O’Neil, was accused of ethics violations, including allowing his neighbor to serve on disciplinary panels with him. Downie was first appointed a judge by former Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, a Democrat.
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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 “Sponsel Hearing” by ABC15.
