A candidate for Pima County Attorney returned a campaign contribution from a Tucson man awaiting trial for manslaughter after the Tucson Weekly discovered the donation on the candidate’s recently submitted 2020 pre-primary campaign finance report.

Laura Conover refunded a $250 donation made to her campaign by Ronald Corbin Jr., who is accused of shooting his girlfriend in the head in front of their 3-year-old child in 2012. Charges were filed six years later after a grand jury found cause to indict Corbin in 2018.

Conover said she was unaware of the contribution due to her campaign being short staffed and having limited resources. She insists the contribution isn’t an issue that should be reported.

“I receive dozens of contributions a day from complete strangers here in our community, including modest contributions from laborers, and thank goodness, because grassroots contributions keep me in the race while the heart of the Republican party pumps so much money into my opponent's coffers. ” Conover wrote in an emailed response upon learning about Corbin’s contribution.

In next week's Democratic primary, Conover, a defense attorney who has never worked as a prosecutor, is facing two prosecutors from the Pima County Attorney's Office: Jonathan Mosher and Mark Deibolt. Mosher, who was a registered Republican until 2014, has received a number of contributions from Republicans, including auto dealer Jim Click, who has encouraged people to support Mosher. No Republican is in the race so the primary will likely determine who will take over the office that current Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall has held since she was first elected in 1996. LaWall has endorsed Mosher.

Within an hour after being contacted by Tucson Weekly yesterday, Conover verified the contribution did in fact come from Corbin along with two donations from one of Corbin’s relatives totaling $250. She refunded the money yesterday.

"After being informed as to who Mr. Corbin is, I sent word to Ms. Ayup's family with my heartfelt sentiments and word that I had returned the contribution,” Conover wrote in a second email after refunding the campaign donations.

In June 2012, Corbin shot his girlfriend in front of the couple’s child after he had been drinking at Maloney’s on 4th. Corbin maintains the shooting was an accident and happened while trying to change the grip of his pistol.

Originally, the Tucson Police Department arrested Corbin on one count of manslaughter for the death of 27-year-old Genna Ayup. However, the accused was later released after prosecutors from Barbara LaWall’s office decided not to file charges citing lack of evidence.

Ward 6 Councilman Steve Kozachik hired private investigator and former Pima County Sheriff’s Department sergeant Weaver J. Barkman to look into the case after Ayup's mother, Toni Solheid, told her story to the councilman. Barkman found several problems with TPD’s original investigation.

“We hired a P.I. and he comes back and said he thought it was Murder One,” Kozachik said. “All we can do at this point is to actually have the trail.”

Kozachik not only takes issue with the Corbin family’s contribution, but also several donations coming from the defendant’s attorneys Laura Udall and Lance Wood because he believes it could delay the trial again should Conover win the Aug. 4 primary.

“This is nothing but a contrived effort by Corbin and his defense team to get this case in front of a new county attorney who would have to say 'My office can’t prosecute because these people donated to my campaign,'” Kozachik said. “If she wins, she’ll have to ask for a change of venue or start all over again and Genna’s family gets screwed.”

In an emailed response, Corbin’s attorney, Lance Wood, said he believes his client was exercising his rights as a free citizen.

“Mr. Corbin is presumed innocent,” Wood wrote. “Mr. Corbin has the right to vote, and the right to participate in the political process.”

Corbin’s trial is set to take place in March 2021.

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Federal authorities are using a new tactic in their battle against protesters in Portland, Oregon: arrest them on offenses as minor as “failing to obey” an order to get off a sidewalk on federal property — and then tell them they can’t protest anymore as a condition for release from jail.

Legal experts describe the move as a blatant violation of the constitutional right to free assembly, but at least 12 protesters arrested in recent weeks have been specifically barred from attending protests or demonstrations as they await trials on federal misdemeanor charges.

“Defendant may not attend any other protests, rallies, assemblies or public gathering in the state of Oregon,” states one “Order Setting Conditions of Release” for an accused protester, alongside other conditions such as appearing for court dates. The orders are signed by federal magistrate judges.

For other defendants, the restricted area is limited to Portland, where clashes between protesters and federal troops have grown increasingly violent in recent weeks. In at least two cases, there are no geographic restrictions; one release document instructs, “Do not participate in any protests, demonstrations, rallies, assemblies while this case is pending.”

Protesters who have agreed to stay away from further demonstrations say they felt forced to accept those terms to get out of jail.

Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry today said schools should not reopen for in-person instruction on Aug. 17, based on the county’s current data on COVID-19 community spread.

In response, the Catalina Foothills School District announced today that it was cancelling in-person classes for the foreseeable future and moving to an online-only model.

Amphi and Tucson Unified School District have board meetings tonight and Marana School District is scheduled to have a meeting on Thursday.

Huckelberry sent a letter to all Pima County public school superintendents on Tuesday, July 28, to follow up on Gov. Doug Ducey’s recent executive order, which directed all county health departments to work with local school districts to determine when it is safe to return to school campuses.

“Clearly, County public health agencies with real time information and data regarding the pandemic are in the best position to offer public health advice regarding school activities related to managing the spread of COVID-19,” Huckelberry wrote.

He stated that Pima County is not ready for schools to go back to traditional learning, citing local COVID-19 infections which are at the “highest daily amounts since the pandemic began.”

Space in local hospitals for COVID-19 patients was nearly exceeded and critical patients had to be transferred to other hospitals in the state, according to Huckelberry. He said widespread testing for COVID-19 with quick turnaround times is only just getting started.

Huckelberry said county-wide transmission rates remain above 11 percent, while the World Health Organization recommends that rates be below 5 percent prior to a reopening.

Huckelberry, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Francisco Garcia and Pima County Health Department Director Dr. Theresa Cullen believe the earliest start date for in-person instruction is after Labor Day, Sept. 7, or possibly early October.

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When he announced an extension Thursday of his order closing bars, gyms, movie theaters and more, Gov. Doug Ducey acknowledged that “businesses and employees have sacrificed” as the state fights the spread of COVID-19.

But some of those businesses are tired of sacrificing.

A lawsuit filed with the Arizona Supreme Court by 50 owners of 44 bars claims Ducey’s order, first filed June 29, is unconstitutional. The bars in the suit come from cities around the state, including Chandler, Mesa, Phoenix, Prescott, Sedona and Tucson, among others.

“They’re all complying with the order,” said Ilan Wurman, the attorney representing the bar owners. “But the reality is that if this goes on for much longer, some of them will just have to open up and risk the enforcement authorities.”

Wurman, an associate professor at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, claims in his filing that the closure order is unconstitutional because it is unevenly applied and it denies bar owners their due process. He also claims that only the Legislature has the power to issue the order and that laws cannot be subject to “the whims of one man.”

PHOENIX – As activists nationwide vandalize, topple and demand the removal of Confederate statues and memorials, the United Daughters of the Confederacy on Wednesday removed two monuments from the Capitol complex and along U.S. 60 near Gold Canyon.

After advocacy groups and local leaders sent letters to Gov. Doug Ducey urging the removal of at least six monuments throughout the state, the United Daughters of the Confederacy on June 30 sent its own letter to Arizona Department of Administration Director Andy Tobin requesting the state “regift” the monuments for repairs.

Overnight, two memorials – the Memorial to the Arizona Confederate Troops in Wesley Bolin Plaza and the Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway marker near Gold Canyon – were removed from state property and “returned to the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the private organization that originally placed the monuments on state property,” according to a news release Thursday from the Arizona Department of Administration.

Activists recently defaced and vandalized these monuments, according to the letter from the United Daughters of the Confederacy, a hereditary society founded in 1894 to honor rebel war dead. It said the monuments are “now in need of repair, but due to the current political climate, we believe it unwise to repair them where they are located.”

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PHOENIX – A lot goes into running a successful election in a normal year, but in the era of COVID-19 that also includes 3,200 gallons of hand sanitizer.

That’s one of several items on a shopping list that includes gloves, masks and face shields, as state elections officials work to make sure they have safeguards in place to protect the vote and voters in the Aug. 4 primary.

With that election less than two weeks away, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs said she is optimistic.

“For both the primary and the general I just feel really confident about being ready to handle the situation,” Hobbs said this week. “I know that things are going to continue to come up that we’re not anticipating, but my office spent all of last year really laying the groundwork to be prepared.”

Hobbs delivered much the same message Tuesday during a virtual meeting of the National Association of Secretaries of State, where elections officials traded stories and tips on how they are “Preparing for Increased Voter Turnout in November 2020.”

For Arizona, that has included a renewed emphasis on mail-in voting, an increase in the use of curbside voting and the development of safety recommendations, released Monday in a pair of guides for voters and poll workers.

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This year, President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign filed defamation lawsuits against three of the country’s most prominent news outlets: The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN. Then it filed another suit against a somewhat lower-profile news organization: northern Wisconsin’s WJFW-TV, which serves the 134th-largest market in the country.

The Trump campaign sued the station over what it claims is a false and defamatory ad WJFW aired that showed Trump downplaying the threat of the coronavirus as a line tracking new COVID-19 infections ticks up and up on the screen.

Dozens of stations ran the ad. But the Trump campaign chose to sue just NBC-affiliate WJFW, which is owned by a relatively small company that only has two other local TV stations, both in Bangor, Maine. The campaign did not initially sue the political organization that produced the ad. That group later joined the case as a defendant.

The curious lawsuit is part of a larger, aggressive and exceedingly expensive legal operation by the Trump campaign that’s the focus of our latest “Trump, Inc.” podcast.