Joe Arpaio rose to fame by placing himself above the laws of his country. His 24 years as the Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, were marked by the abuse of suspects’ rights and by tireless self-promotion. “America’s toughest sheriff,” as he styled himself, set up an outdoor jail in which prisoners, many of them still to be tried, sweltered in the desert heat. In 2008, a judge found conditions in Maricopa county’s other jails so cruel as to be unconstitutional. The sheriff also had a penchant for stunts such as showing prisoners on public webcams, or sending a deputy to Hawaii to look into President Obama’s birth certificate. Above all, he chased and detained, in much-hyped “posses”, anyone who he thought might be in the country illegally.
This led to frequent run-ins with federal authorities, often leaving Maricopa County taxpayers with big settlements or fines to pay. In 2011, a federal judge ordered the then-sheriff to stop detaining people only on suspicion that they were in the country illegally. In 2013 the same judge, a George W Bush appointee, specifically forbade the sheriff’s office from targeting Latinos.
Mr Arpaio did not think much of the judge’s orders: last month, he was found guilty of contempt of court for failing to follow them. The defence argued that the former sheriff had not wilfully defied the orders because he had deferred their enforcement to deputies, and that in any case state and federal law gave him authority to detain immigrants. But he had bragged about ignoring the rulings in the press, and it is not a sheriff’s job to interpret laws. Under the US constitution, that is what judges do.