Patrick McNamara's best of 2014

The testimony of eyewitnesses plays a key role in a majority of criminal cases.

“There is no more powerful evidence in a criminal trial than a witness pointing at someone and saying, ‘That’s the guy,’” said Arizona State University criminology and criminal justice professor Henry F. Fradella.

The problem, Fradella said, is eyewitnesses oftentimes are flat wrong.

To strengthen the value of eyewitness accounts, the National Academy of Sciences in October issued a report titled “Identifying the Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness Identification,” which provides a list of recommendations designed to set a national standard of best practices for police and courts in handling eyewitness accounts.

The report, a distillation of decades of independent research, makes recommendations such as training law enforcement in issues with eyewitness memory, developing standardized witness instructions and videotaping the witness-identification process, among others.

There’s also a recommendation for police to implement double-blind photo arrays and lineup procedures, where the individual administering the lineup doesn’t know the identity of the suspect as a way to eliminate the possibility of influencing a witness.

“If the state is going to take away your liberty, they better get it right,” said Amshula Jayaram, state policy advocate with the New York-based Innocence Project.

The group has helped to exonerate hundreds of wrongfully convicted people.

Inaccurate eyewitness identification played a role in nearly three-quarters of the wrongful conviction cases the project has worked on, Jayaram said.

The memory hole

Criminologists and psychologists have long known the inherent problems with eyewitness identifications.

A key issue has to do with memory, and how people naturally acquire, retain and retrieve events they have witnessed.

“Memory is flawed,” Fradella said. “Our memory does not function like a videotape.”

Factors such as the immediate surroundings of an event, short opportunities for observation, poor lighting and sensory overload can all affect a person’s memory.

Added to that, the mind will often naturally fill in the gaps of a memory with other nonrelated events or with memories of things seen and heard at different times in a phenomenon known as confabulation.

Upon retrieving memories, a person’s mind similarly can transfer recollections of unrelated events or of things that may not have occurred at all.

In this instance, researchers have found people’s memories can be influenced by suggestion of outside forces such as the questioning from law enforcement or from images a person was exposed to in the media.

Cross-racial identification has also been shown to be a problem in many instances.

For many eyewitnesses, accurately identifying people of other races proves difficult.

Researchers have found people can more readily discern subtleties of expressions, emotions and facial features of members of their own racial group than those of other groups.

The so-called “weapons focus” also affects a person’s recollections.

This effect holds that people confronted with a weapon-wielding person naturally tend to focus their attention on the weapon and not the individual.

“These are the sorts of things the justice system can’t do anything about,” Fradella said.

What the system can do

While policy and procedure changes can’t alter the subtleties of the mind, they can help to minimize the risk of misidentification.

The Pima County Sheriff’s Department has for many years sought to have uniformity in creating photo lineups.

The photos are drawn from a database of mugshots taken at the jail where all arrestees are placed in front of a neutral background and covered with a sheet from the neck down.

In assembling a six-pack photo lineup, a computer system selects photos based on similar physical features as the suspect.

Police can also manually reject images that in some way stand out from the others in a lineup.

The department hasn’t implemented double-blind lineups as the NAS report recommends, but witnesses are dealt with in a low-pressure manner, said David Theel, commander of PCSD’s Violent Crimes and Targeted Offenders division.

“We tell our witnesses they are not obligated to make an identification,” Theel said.

The department also will not mingle nonmugshot photos — such as those from driver’s licenses, for example — with mugshots in order to preserve uniformity of appearance.

The Tucson Police Department does use a double-blind procedure in photo arrays.

Veteran Tucson defense attorney Brick Storts said avoiding even such a minor difference as the color of backgrounds in photo arrays has helped to eliminate many misidentifications.

“I think they try to do a fairly decent job of it,” Storts said.

That’s in particular contrast to how photo lineups were approached in decades past, he said. Storts remembers detectives simply handing witnesses stacks of photographs to sort through.

Detectives questioning witnesses also use uniform language in describing lineups to witnesses.

They tell witnesses the suspect may not be in the lineup, to study each image independently and to avoid guessing.

The department does not routinely videotape or make audio recordings of eyewitness interactions.

The department would consider adopting some of the recommendations made in the NAS report, Theel said, but the changes would have to made in cooperation with the Pima County Attorney’s Office, which prosecutes the cases police present.

Courtroom changes

The report also recommends changes to address some of the issues of misidentification in the courtroom setting.

“Unfortunately, eyewitness identification is devastating from the standpoint of what happens at trial,” Storts said.

Storts, whose legal career began in 1962, said he would like to see the courts use a more explicit jury instruction on eyewitness testimony, as is recommended in the report.

The current instruction used in most criminal cases in Arizona courts tells jurors to give all testimony the weight they think it deserves.

An instruction from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, however, gives explicit direction to jurors, listing five factors to take into account when considering eyewitness testimony.

They include: the opportunity a witness had to observe a suspect, whether the identification was influenced later on, inconsistent identifications, if the witness had previously seen the suspect, and the totality of the circumstances surrounding the identification.

“How do we get the jury to understand that eyewitness testimony is really unreliable evidence,” Fradella said. “Some of these things that prevent wrongful conviction really are empirically sound.”

One way, he said, is for the courts to allow more expert testimony at trial explaining to jurors the problems of eyewitness accounts.

The NAS report addresses the issue with recommendations for judges on allowing expert witness testimony on eyewitness identification.

In the name of justice

Since eyewitness accounts play a key role in so many criminal prosecutions, getting it right is seen as central to the quest for justice.

“Everybody benefits when you get it right,” Jayaram said. “When you get it wrong, the only person who benefits is the real perpetrator.”

The costs of wrongful conviction go beyond the individual miscarriage of justice and spill over into the community, she said, noting every wrongful conviction leaves a criminal free to commit more crimes.

Fradella said the societal costs all adversely affect the community’s bottom line, too, by diverting money from other areas to pay for prosecution and incarceration.

“We live in an age where our resources are scarce,” he said. “These are resources that could have been used for education.”

Tucsonans are significantly safer than they were 20 years ago. Their property? Not so much.

Despite falling crime rates both nationally and locally, the community still has a major blemish on its public-safety résumé when it comes to thefts, burglaries, arsons and auto thefts.

The recently released FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2013 shows the Tucson region has the 10th-highest property-crime rate among metropolitan areas with at least 100,000 people.

Like most of the country, property crime here is down. But it has not fallen nearly as much as it has in most other communities.

The Tucson area’s property-crime rate is 4,849 per 100,000 residents. The national average for metro areas of more than 100,000 people is 2,730 per 100,000 residents.

At its peak in the mid-1990s, Tucson’s property-crime rate hit 8,892 per 100,000 residents — then nearly double the national average.

One factor that plays into the region’s high property-crime rate is the highly transient population.

“It’s not just moving in or out, it’s also that population moving within a metropolitan area, like Tucson, certainly has something to do with property crimes,” said Scott Decker, foundation professor at Arizona State University’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

The Tucson region is highly transient. The average Tucsonan moves every 3.5 years, compared to the national average of 5.2 years, data from the Pima Association of Governments show.

Over 80 percent of renters have lived at their present address less than 18 months, PAG data shows.

“The issue for population mobility is it makes it more difficult for people to know their neighbors,” Decker said. “It makes it more difficult for people to know what’s normal for a neighborhood; who belongs there and who doesn’t and who might be up to no good. When there’s a lot of mobility, those things are more difficult to get a handle on.”

While property crime remains high when compared to other regions, it is down significantly, largely because of the dramatic drop in auto thefts. In 1995, the region reported more than 7,450 auto thefts. By 2013, that figure had fallen to 3,030.

VIOLENT CRIME DECLINES

Along with auto theft, the FBI calculates property crime by compiling instances of burglary, larceny-theft and arson.

Sgt. Pete Dugan of the Tucson Police Department said modern anti-theft devices on newer cars have made it more difficult for thieves to steal them. Larceny and burglary also have been on the decline.

Like property crime, the rate of violent crime also has declined almost annually since the 1990s. The FBI compiles stats on murder and non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery and aggravated assault to calculate violent crime.

There’s no single reason to account for the drop in violent crime. Various studies point to an improving economy, more concealed-weapons laws, gun-control regulation, more police, higher incarceration rates and changing demographics.

“It’s a complicated story with no easy answer,” ASU’s Decker said.

He said smarter policing and prisons certainly accounted for a portion of the drop.

“It’s not just locking people up. It’s about who you lock up,” he said. “It’s about using prison for the most crime-prone groups. It has more to do with smart sentencing than locking people up.”

One of the biggest factors for the decline is an aging population, Decker said.

“The percent of the population that you have between 18 to 30 years old makes a big difference,” he said.

The Tucson region’s population has been growing slightly older over the past 15 years. In 2000, the median age in the region was 35. By the 2010 Census, the median age had increased to 37.

“We’re an aging country,” Pima County sheriff’s Chief Deputy Chris Nanos said. “And the least likely group to be involved in crime is the elderly.”

In addition to infrequent forays into crime, the elderly are also more engaged with their neighborhood and community, Nanos said. He pointed to areas such as Saddlebrooke and Green Valley as examples.

“Because they get involved with their communities, that reflects in their low crime rates,” Nanos said. “If you have any community involved in a problem, crime drops.”

REALITIES, GOOD AND BAD

The connection between crime and immigration has been the subject of much speculation.

Despite rhetoric surrounding immigration and crime, Decker said the numbers show that higher populations of Hispanics correlate to lower crime rates.

Areas with higher Hispanic populations, such as the Southwest, tend to experience fewer crimes than Eastern or Midwest cities, he said.

While the continued drop in crime rates has been a welcome trend, crime still is an issue that has raised concerns among the region’s business community.

Mike Varney, president and CEO of the Tucson Metro Chamber, said crime turned up as a main concern in a study the group plans to release next week.

“Crime was a straight negative across the board,” in the chamber’s “Community Quality Report Card,” Varney said.

When the region has crime rates above the national average, it creates a more difficult environment for businesses to thrive. But Varney said the chamber believes that improving the regional economy would in the long run help reduce crime.

This year’s crime report was the first of the FBI’s annual reports since 2005 that included data on the property crimes for the city of Tucson or the metro area.

For seven years, reports left categories for larceny and property crime blank for Tucson, with a notation stating: “The FBI determined that the agency did not follow national Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program guidelines for reporting an offense.”

During that seven-year gap, the Tucson Police Department reported property crime in a way the FBI did not recognize. Adjustments have been made to account for those crimes, although TPD officials did not respond to a request late last week to explain their changes.

For the second time in three years, charges of illegal sexual conduct with a minor were dismissed and the defendant set free because of a loophole in the law.

Most recently, because twice-accused sex offender Albert Manuel Rosthenhausler lacks the ability to understand the charges he faced, Pima County Superior Court Judge Deborah Bernini had no option but to release him.

Unless the law is changed, if he repeats his crime the court will have to let him go again because mental health evaluations found him incompetent to understand or participate in his defense — and due to a traumatic brain injury, no amount of treatment or course of medication can restore him to competency.

The law is clear: No matter how serious the allegations, if someone is not competent to help defend himself, the government must drop the charges and set the defendant free.

While Rosthenhausler’s circumstances are rare, they illustrate a gap in the criminal code some have called “the Rule 11 hole” — a hole some county officials want state lawmakers to fill.

What is Rule 11

Rule 11 in the Code of Criminal Procedure says that if either side in a criminal case thinks a defendant may have a mental illness or cognitive defect that prevents him or her from understanding or participating in court proceedings, the defendant can request a hearing. In Pima County the judge would be Bernini, who heads up the county’s mental health court.

Under Rule 11, the defendant must undergo at least two evaluations by behavioral health professionals. If one or both doctors find the defendant not competent, he or she is ordered to participate in the Restoration to Competency program, which aims to help the person meet the legal definition of competent. That means defendants must be able to understand the charges they face, assist in their defense and be able to knowingly accept a plea agreement or face trial.

Through the program, the defendant receives what amounts to a remedial civics education designed to explain the legal process and the potential consequences he or she faces.

While most defendants either successfully complete the restoration program or are deemed “not competent, not restorable” within three to four months, the process legally can last as long as 21 months before a determination is made.

Pima County’s in-custody restoration program has a high success rate. Since 2008, the rate of defendants found not competent, not restorable has fallen almost every year, from more than a third of defendants referred to as few as 1 percent in fiscal 2013.

Since 2008, in-custody defendants in 80 cases have been ruled incompetent.

One of those was Rosthenhausler, a finding that didn’t surprise anyone familiar with his history.

Court documents show Rosthenhausler, now 27, suffered a traumatic brain injury when he was a teen. In addition to physical disabilities like diminished mobility, his injury left him with severely limited cognitive ability and little impulse control.

He was accused of sexual conduct with a minor in 2014 and sexual abuse of a minor in 2011.

“He is not able to answer questions in a appropriate manner, as he does not present with the ability to process information,” said a report the public fiduciary filed with the recently dismissed case.

When a defendant like Rosthenhausler is found incompetent, the court has three options:

• Remand the defendant to the department of health services for civil commitment proceedings;
• Refer the case to probate court for appointment of guardianship over the defendant;
• Dismiss the charges and drop the case.

The third option is the most common because many defendants faced nonviolent drug offenses or other low-level charges.

Other options are rarely useD

If a judge refers a case to what’s called a Title 36 civil commitment hearing, the person will be evaluated to determine if one of three factors are present — whether the person is a danger to himself or others, gravely disabled or persistently disabled.

If any of those conditions apply, a commitment hearing is held. And for commitment to be approved, two doctors must agree on the person’s mental condition. But even if doctors and witnesses agree an involuntary commitment is warranted, the process will stop if at any time the person agrees to take medication.

Appointed guardianship is another infrequently exercised option. Either a family member proves able to care for the person or the public fiduciary can take guardianship. But the courts cannot order the fiduciary to do so, and the office is more often inclined to help a person locate public resources like Arizona Long Term Care System or the state’s Division of Developmental Disabilities rather than accept guardianship.

“We cannot place anyone without public resources or their own resources,” said Pima County Public Fiduciary Philip Grant, whose office was asked to take over Rosthenhausler’s guardianship because his family was unable to manage his care.

Grant said the office instead found Rosthenhausler placement in a secure group home with Department of Economic Security funding.

He lives there with other men. Security limits his ability to go out into the community and come in contact with juveniles. But he is not in “lock down.”

And his stay is voluntary, insofar as a relative who serves as his legal guardian has agreed to his placement there. But since he hasn’t been convicted of any crime, he could be released if that permission is revoked.

Grant said the fiduciary’s budget and limited staff make it difficult to accept guardianships over people without assets. Right now the office has only one Rule 11-connected guardianship.

“It becomes no one’s responsibility,” said Danna Whiting, behavioral health administrator with Pima County Behavioral Health.

In other words, the hole in the system prevents anyone being the responsible party over an incompetent defendant.

What can be done?

“The system left me a little frustrated by its lack of ability to address his specific situation,” said Rosthenhausler’s defense attorney, Kyle Ipson.

Cases like Rosthenhausler’s, though infrequent, present a challenge to the legal system in terms of balancing the rights of individuals against the right of the community to be safe.

State lawmakers have talked of addressing the issue in past sessions but not taken action.

“In their effort to do the right thing legally, they have failed in their ability to do the right thing socially,” said Terri Rahner, mental health clinical coordinator for Pima County Superior Court.

Rahner said the size and complexities of the criminal justice system make it difficult to address all situations. But the limited options available to the courts to deal with potentially violent offenders who were set free presents a cause for concern, she said.

“The law itself has to change in order to fix the problem,” Whiting said. “At this point, there’s no one responsible, there’s no one watching them.”

Kathleen Mayer, a deputy Pima County Attorney who lobbies the legislature, said she and officials from Pima County Behavior Health and Pima County Superior Court have been discussing ways to address the Rule 11 issue.

One solution, she said, would be to give the court expanded oversight of an incompetent person’s case.

For example, a person could be deemed potentially dangerous and hospitalized for as long as he or she would have been sentenced, Mayer said, with annual reviews to determine mental state and to re-evaluate status.

“It’s very similar to how we deal with people who are found to be sexually violent,” Mayer said.

A bill proposed in the last Legislative session that would have let judges order a potentially dangerous offender who was previously found incompetent to be involuntarily committed to a secure facility.

The bill failed, in part because of the potential costs.

Estimates showed about 24 defendants each year could be eligible for involuntary commitment to the Arizona State Hospital at a total cost of as much as $5.7 million per year.

The program was expected to grow, requiring more bed space. As a result a new facility with an estimated cost of $50 million was expected.

Mayer said the current discussions seek to find a less costly solution, but she said that no matter what the outcome, even if no reforms are made, costs will remain in the form of court fees, social services and incarceration.

“Money is going to be spent on these individuals in some way,” she said. “A cost will be borne no matter what happens.”

The defendant sat silently throughout jury selection, the trial, the reading of the guilty verdict, and the moment when court security placed him in handcuffs and led him out of the courtroom.

Alberto Gonzalez Marrufo was convicted on Wednesday of two counts of fraud and one count of theft in Pima County Superior Court. He did not have a lawyer, did not present evidence or cross-examine the state’s witnesses, and did nothing to aid in his own defense.

In fact, Marrufo refused to even sit at the defendant’s table, choosing instead to watch like a spectator from the gallery as the prosecutor made a case against him.

When asked mid-trial to talk about his unconventional defense, he politely declined.

Marrufo is part of a loose-knit, anti-government group sometimes called the “sovereign citizen” movement. His refusal to participate in the court proceeding was an expression of the group’s rejection of governmental authority and the court’s authority to try and judge him. The specific charges against Marrufo included making counterfeit checks using the routing and account numbers of U.S. Treasury accounts, which he used to pay off the loan balances on two cars.

But more than a simple fraud and theft, Assistant Arizona Attorney General Mike Jette said, “This is a statement case,” which the state decided to prosecute to make clear no one, whatever their politics, has a right to access public funds for their own enrichment.

“This movement needs to be stopped,” Jette said.

Sovereign citizen refers to a subset of anti-government, anti-tax philosophies. The FBI considers the more extreme adherents of the movement, some of who have engaged in violence against law enforcement, as domestic terrorists.

While movement doctrine speaks to the anti-government sensibilities of many Americans, law enforcement says adherents’ proclamations often mask the nefarious goals of a larger scam designed to separate disaffected people from their money.

They generally reject all federal, state and local government authority, deny the authority of courts and judges, and repudiate the government’s right of taxation, contending the U.S. is governed by a secret corporate cabal.

With ideological roots in the 1970s Posse Comitatus movement, sovereigns often only recognize the authority of county governments, displaying special reverence to county sheriffs.

“They feel sorry for you and me because we’re still cowed by this system that keeps us in federal servitude,” said Ryan Lenz, senior writer for the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center.

Beyond unique interpretations of the law, many sovereigns share a fixation with punctuation and capitalization.

Because birth certificates and most legal documents display a person’s name in all capital letters, sovereigns claim this really represents the name of a shell corporation established in the person’s name.

They believe when the U.S. abandoned the gold standard in 1933, the government was forced to deposit its citizens’ future earning potential as collateral in secret trusts represented by the capitalized name.

The sovereign philosophy also has its own jargon-ridden language, which adherents deploy in often-indecipherable legal filings, believing that in using specific language and citing arcane laws, they can legally liberate themselves from the illegitimate corporate government cabal.

On some court papers, Marrufo handwrote, “No! No! No!” and “I do not recognize,” across the state’s filings. In others he wrote he “did not wish to contract” with the government, claiming the case lacked “ratification.”

“I object, deny and don’t recognize any and all contracts and alleged agreements made between judge Howard Fell, the Arizona State Attorney General Michael P. Jette there has been no ratification of commencement in the matter … and I cannot move forward with this case,” Marrufo wrote in a February 2013 filing.

Lenz said unorthodox courtroom behavior like Marrufo’s is typical of sovereigns. Marrufo’s refusal to go beyond the barrier separating the gallery from the litigants in the courtroom is also common practice.

“When you cross over that, you cross into an area of the country that has been annexed by Washington, D.C.,” Lenz said of the sovereign belief system, which also holds that federal authority doesn’t extend beyond Washington’s borders.

Law enforcement officials say sovereigns’ language and behavior is part of the larger goal of plundering public assets.

“A lot of times, you have people who are simply fraudsters,” said Joshua M. Robbins, Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California. “Mr. Marrufo, from our perspective, is simply one of those people.”

Robbins helped prosecute Marrufo and dozens of other people who were previously involved in a large-scale tax fraud in California.

Federal investigators say a scam operated by a group called the Old Quest Foundation held seminars purporting to teach attendees how to void debts, prevent home foreclosures and access potentially millions of dollars the government held in their names in secret trusts.

Marrufo worked with Old Quest instructing people on ways to file fraudulent tax and court documents, Robbins said, calling it the largest tax-return fraud in the country’s history.

Under a plea agreement, Marrufo spent six months in federal prison.

Lenz said numerous so-called “sovereign gurus” travel the country selling “secret knowledge” at seminars and training sessions.

“We live in a country where the phrase ‘What the experts don’t want you to know’ is very popular,” Lenz said.

Lenz said sovereigns are responsible for the deaths of at least six police officers in recent years, which in part has led the federal government to classify the movement among domestic terrorist groups.

Jette said Marrufo has not made threats or shown any history of violence.

Marrufo is scheduled for sentencing Sept. 22. He faces between 3 and 12½ years in prison.

The nearly two-hour execution of convicted murderer Joseph Rudolph Wood has raised questions about the efficacy of lethal injection as a way to kill.

Despite the prolonged execution on Wednesday, prison and Arizona attorney general’s officials said the condemned inmate didn’t feel pain.

However, a well-known professor of anesthesiology and the Pima County medical examiner said there is no way to tell if he did or didn’t.

The execution procedure was the longest since the state resumed executing people more than two decades ago — more than triple the previous longest, that of Daniel Cook, whose 2012 execution took 37 minutes.

“Throughout this execution, I conferred and collaborated with our IV team members and was assured unequivocally that the inmate was comatose and never in pain or distress,” Arizona Department of Corrections Director Charles Ryan said in news release immediately after the execution.

Assistant Arizona Attorney General Jeffrey Zick also asserted the inmate did not feel pain, during Supreme Court arguments over an emergency stay of execution Wood’s attorney’s requested while the execution was ongoing.

“The brain stem is working, but there’s no brain activity,” Zick said, relating the information he was given from the execution room at that moment, according to a hearing transcript. He described Wood’s repeated open-mouthed gasps as “snoring” and an “involuntary reaction” similar to what happens when patients are taken off life support.

He also said Wood received a second dose of drugs partway into the execution.

But Joel Zivot, an anesthesiologist and professor of anesthesiology and surgery at the Emory University School of Medicine, said there’s no way to know for certain if a person feels pain during a lethal injection execution.

“They’ve not produced a shred of evidence to support that claim,” Zivot said.

Despite the widely accepted belief that unconscious people don’t, or even can’t, feel pain, Zivot said that’s not the case.

“The court and the public have grievously erred by wrongly claiming that unconscious individuals are incapable of experiencing pain,” he said.

Determining if an unconscious person experienced pain requires, in part, the ability of the person to convey their experience after regaining consciousness, he said.

In anesthesiology, doctors administer chemical compounds designed to save lives, Zivot said. In fact, many of the drugs have been engineered specifically to minimize the risk of death.

“What happened in Arizona is just another example that these compounds are not made for killing,” he said.

The Department of Corrections used a mix of midazolam and hydromorphone to execute Wood.

Midazolam is often used in surgeries because of its sedative and amnesic effects. Hydromorphone is a drug derived from morphine characterized by palliative and painkilling effects.

The same two drugs were used in Ohio in January to execute Dennis McGuire, a convicted murderer and rapist, whose execution also raised questions about the continued use of lethal injection because it took 25 minutes before he was pronounced dead.

A state of Ohio investigation, likewise, determined McGuire did not experience pain during the execution, saying the large dosages of drugs rendered him unconscious before “irregular bodily movements” similar to those Wood exhibited were seen.

But the report also cites a need to further examine the drugs’ effects.

Wood was found guilty in Pima County Superior Court of the shooting his former girlfriend and her father.

In 1989, after a stormy and often violent relationship, Wood set out to kill Debbie Deitz. In phone messages played at his trial, Wood intimated to Deitz that he would kill her and himself.

On Aug. 27, he drove to Deitz’s father’s midtown auto-body shop. Once there, Wood rushed inside, first shooting the father, Eugene Deitz, then turning his gun on Debbie Deitz.

Gregory Hess, chief medical examiner with the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner, conducted an autopsy on Wood’s remains.

He said the question of how much pain a person endures prior to death is subjective and difficult to answer, particularly through an autopsy.

“That’s not really what an autopsy report is for,” Hess said.

He said Wood’s cause of death was still pending, as was a toxicology report that would examine the levels of chemical compounds in his system.

Hess also noted the placement of IVs in Wood’s veins was done properly, unlike past executions in which inmates’ veins were pierced through or missed completely.

In a news release Thursday, corrections chief Ryan upbraided media reports characterizing Wood’s nearly two-hour long execution as “botched.”

“This is pure conjecture because there is no medical or forensic evidence to date that supports that conclusion,” Ryan said in the release.

But the fact remains that Wood’s execution was by far the most drawn-out lethal-injection execution in the state’s history, and has drawn international attention.

Documents provided by the federal Public Defender’s Office in Phoenix show the previous longest interval from administration of the lethal dosage to time of death was 37 minutes, when Daniel Cook was put to death for a pair brutal torture killings in 1987.

Since 2010, the state has executed 14 people. Only Cook’s took more than 30 minutes. Eight were done in fewer than 15 minutes.

Wednesday’s execution has prompted discussions about the method of state-administered death similar to those following the 1992 execution of Donald Eugene Harding, who was put to death in the gas chamber for a pair of murders in Tucson in 1980.

Witnesses said Harding took small, gasping breaths for 11 minutes before he died. At the time, he was the first Arizonan to be executed since 1963.

Arizona voters approved a ballot initiative in November 1993 to switch from the gas chamber to lethal injection.

Zivot described lethal injections as “theater” created by state prisons to mimic a safe and clinical setting.

“It’s quite horrifying, but it’s not a medical act,” Zivot said. “To my mind it has never been proven to be safe.”

He noted that medical societies such as the American Medical Association do not condone members participating in executions.

He said states should institute immediate moratoriums on lethal injection.

Since Wood’s execution, Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne has said his office would stop seeking death warrants for the state’s death-row inmates pending an investigation. Gov. Jan Brewer ordered an inquiry into the execution.

Tucson police officers have long complained they are some of the lowest paid in the state — with some validity, an Arizona Daily Star salary comparison shows.

Although Tucson is Arizona’s second-largest city, the base salary for police officers ranks near the bottom when compared to other law enforcement agencies in the state and region.

TPD has a long list of pay add-ons to boost that base pay. But most other cities have similar inducements, still leaving Tucson at the low end of the scale.

Police chiefs and union officials say low pay drives good officers to look elsewhere. That doesn’t appear to have happened during the recession, but economic recovery has stirred fears that recruiters could come looking for officers already trained at Tucson taxpayer expense.

TPD ranks 10th

TPD ranked 10th of 14 law enforcement agencies in median salary, a Star comparison showed.

The city paid its police officers a median salary of $53,643 — almost $14,000 less than the top-paying city, Scottsdale, which pays a median of $67,298.

The disparity grows even further when maximum salary is considered. Tucson officers are paid $18,000 less than Scottsdale offers at the top end, and just short of $7,000 less than El Paso, which ranked ninth on the pay list.

Tucson’s lagging police pay scale has long been a thorny issue, particularly in years when the city has denied pay raises to nonpublic-safety workers. To skirt the pay-raise issue, the city has come up with additional ways to augment police take-home pay.

From generous overtime to special-assignment pay, to perks like the selling back unused sick days, police have collectively bargained for numerous forms of premium pay unavailable to most nonpublic-safety employees.

In 1996, the council agreed to pay Tucson officers 95 percent of what cities in Maricopa County paid their officers. But it became clear early on that Tucson’s finances couldn’t keep pace, so premium pay was created to offset discrepancies, TPD Chief Roberto Villaseñor said.

The first category was special assignment pay, created to pay more to bomb techs and SWAT-team members. Later, sick-leave sell-back and other add-ons where implemented to fill the void of frozen base pays.

Today, just about any duty outside of patrol duty is considered special-assignment pay, which gives officers a 5 percent pay bump for any one of the numerous duties that qualify, Villaseñor said.

Even though Tucson officers have multiple options to bump up their annual salaries, other police departments offer similar inducements, leaving Tucson at a continual disadvantage when it tries to attract or retain quality officers, Villasenor said.

He said the department expects to lose more than 100 officers next year through retirements and attrition. Between January 2008 and April 2014, 327 officers left TPD, most of them — 173 — via retirement.

Despite the often-raised concerns many officers would leave for larger paychecks elsewhere, only about 31 of them moved to other law enforcement agencies in that time, city documents show.

Many officers have been holding on to see if pay improves, said Jason Winsky, government affairs director of the Tucson Police Officers Association. Since things haven’t changed even though the economy has experienced a recovery, Winsky fears more officers could bolt soon.

“We’re very concerned that some of our very best people will start leaving for other departments,” he said.

THE COSTS OF PREMIUM PAY

As a result of the multiple options offered, TPD officers last year earned about $13 million in nonbase salary, about 18 percent of overall salary.

Most of that came from overtime ($4.2 million), special duty pay ($3.2 million), and sick-leave sell-back ($1.5 million).

Special duty pay is what officers receive for working on their own time providing security for special events or private companies. Companies pay TPD directly, and the money is added to an officer’s salary.

The city’s nonpublic-safety employees earned about $6.3 million in nonbase pay in 2013, or about 5 percent of their overall salary. Most of that came from overtime ($2.5 million), payouts at retirement ($1.1 million), and on-call pay ($974,000).

Of the 1,023 officers TPD had on its payroll at some point in the past year, 496 — nearly half — earned $10,000 or more in nonbase pay. That includes 182 officers who earned over $20,000 and 29 who earned over $40,000. The top earner took in $66,800 in nonbase pay.

Among nonpublic-safety city employees, 141 of 3,603 full- and part-time employees earned $10,000 or more in nonbase salary last year, with 31 earning over $20,000. Seven earned over $40,000, with the top earner making $84,432.

The top earners for nonpublic-safety employees made most of their extra money from payouts when they retired from the city.

NOT JUST HERE

The rise in public-sector and public-safety union influence can be traced to New York City, where in 1958 municipal employees won the right of collective bargaining, touching off enormous growth in public-sector union membership and strength.

“That was a kind of domino effect,” said Steven Malanga, a researcher and writer for the Manhattan Institute, a New York City-based conservative think tank.

About 35 percent of all government workers have union representation, compared with 6.7 percent in the private sector, the United States Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics says.

Malanga said the growth of public-safety unions has coincided with the proliferation of nonsalary pay augmentations, which he said help mask the true costs of employment.

He described the relationship as a “game” played between elected officials and union negotiators, saying public-safety employees can effectively get the pay raises they want and municipal officials don’t have to increase the base-salary rates.

Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik, who has been critical of police premium pay, said city leaders have played that game for years.

“The whole discussion about base pay for our cops is a farce. Mayors and councils over time haven’t had the guts to simply give a straight-up pay increase, so these stealth benefits have grown up over time as a way to do it out of the sunlight,” Kozachik said.

He said police should be paid higher, just not through gimmicks.

CHANGES TO COME?

City officials hope a simplification of the complex pay arrangements can be negotiated with the unions representing city workers later this year.

“We are trying to make it clearer what the base pay is and the additional pay, so that we’re not compensating for low base pay by adding premium pay,” said Assistant City Manager Martha Durkin.

“That’s where we got backwards. We neglected to address base pay, but added all the premium pay.”

Durkin said while nonpublic-safety employees don’t have nearly as many premium pay options, public safety officers perform a special kind of work and deserve to be compensated fairly.

But even as the city tries to simplify how police and fire personnel are paid, she said, premium pay will likely remain to some degree.

Winsky said the union is willing to discuss increasing base pay in exchange for dumping some premium pays. But, he said, “Those increases would have to be significant for us to give up benefits we’ve fought for.”

Southern Arizona’s Pascua Yaqui Tribe is one of the first native groups in the nation to earn legal standing to prosecute outsiders who attack women on tribal lands.

The Pascua Yaquis — along with the Tulalip Tribes of Washington and the Umatilla Tribes of Oregon — have been been awarded special domestic-violence criminal jurisdiction, included in the Violence Against Women Act of 2013. The measure allows tribes to prosecute non-Native Americans in tribal courts if they are accused of domestic violence on tribal lands.

The designation is fairly limited. It applies only in cases of domestic violence or dating violence, and only can be used to prosecute non-Native Americans who live on tribal lands, are employed within tribal boundaries, or have a spouse or intimate partner who is a tribal member.

But it represents a real and symbolic victory for tribes across the country, legal experts say.

“The main issue was basically protecting the women who have been assaulted on the reservation,” said Alfred Urbina, chief prosecutor for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona. Violations of orders of protection issued in tribal courts would also fall under the expanded jurisdiction.

To be approved for the additional jurisdiction, tribes must meet specific requirements, including effective counsel for defendants, free lawyers for indigent defendants, and juries that include a cross-section of the community, including non-Native Americans.

Also, judges who preside over the cases must be licensed attorneys; the tribe’s criminal laws and rules must be available to the public; and its proceedings have to be recorded.

Urbina said the Pascua Yaqui Tribe plans to include in its possible jury pool the nearly 500 nonmembers living on tribal lands and the many non-Native Americans who work for tribal enterprises like casinos and hotels.

AN ONGOING PROBLEM

Domestic violence and other violent crimes against women are persistent problems in Native American communities, particularly on tribal lands.

A policy brief the National Congress of American Indians published last year in advance of the new law noted a demonstrably higher rate of violent crimes against Native American women than against other women.

Citing studies from the U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the report said American Indian and Alaska Native women experience violent crime at a rate more than double other races.

It notes that as many as 61 percent of Native American and Alaska Native women have been the victims of assault, compared with about half of women among other races.

The report also said about 34 percent of Native women are the victims of rape or sexual assault compared with about 19 percent of non-Native American women.

A Pascua Yaqui-commissioned report by the Center for Court Innovation, a New York-based think tank, identified domestic violence as the biggest challenge the Pascua Yaqui tribal court system faces.

Of the 503 nontraffic criminal charges filed in the Pascua Yaqui court in 2011, 267 were domestic violence charges.

SOME RECENT HISTORY

Native American tribes used to have authority to prosecute non-Indians, but that changed in 1978 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the appeal of a man arrested for assaulting a tribal police officer in Washington.

In that case, the court ruled tribes do not have the right to prosecute nonmembers. The court held that tribes had forfeited full sovereignty in exchange for protection from the United States.

Since then, non-Indian offenders have been prosecuted in federal district courts.

For proponents of the changes, the new law recognizes that tribes have the autonomy to protect their members.

“Tribal governments inherently have the right to protect these people,” said Dorma Sahneyah, National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center program specialist and a former prosecutor for the Hopi Tribe.

Sahneyah said it is imperative for tribes to prosecute domestic-violence cases no matter who the perpetrators are because of a gap in public safety that exists on many reservations, where people often live in remote areas far from the federal authorities that hold jurisdiction.

Some studies indicate that distance and other factors prompt federal prosecutors to decline prosecution of crimes committed on tribal lands at rates from 40 to 70 percent.

Sahneyah said allowing the tribes to prosecute nonmembers in domestic cases would force offenders to pay for their crimes.

“The people who would benefit are tribal people,” she said. “They need that protection.”

legal ISSUES

Critics of the new law argue the changes are unconstitutional.

“The tribal courts will quite clearly be exercising federal authority,” said Paul J. Larkin, an attorney and research fellow with the Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation and former assistant to the U.S. solicitor general.

If the tribes are allowed to prosecute non-Indians, tribal judges would become officers of the United States exercising federal power, Larkin said, something for which no constitutional basis exists.

He said the law effectively bypasses the appointments clause of Article II in the Constitution because the president does not appoint tribal court judges.

A possible remedy, Larkin said, would be for Congress to grant federal or state courts jurisdiction over crimes the tribal courts would prosecute.

But that would still leave tribes without the prosecutorial jurisdiction they seek, he said.

Melissa L. Tatum, director of the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Center at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, said that argument assumes Congress had granted authority to tribal courts rather than recognizing an existing authority of the tribes.

Tatum notes that a 2003 Supreme Court decision recognized Congress’ authority to relax restrictions on tribal sovereignty. In that case, the question was whether a tribe had the right to prosecute nontribal members who themselves were Native American.

The argument follows then, that if congressional action can relax some restrictions, it could ease others and allow tribal courts to prosecute non-Indians.

Department of Justice officials used a similar rationale in addressing questions about potential constitutional issues before a congressional committee last year.

takes effect this month

Even in the face of new legal challenges, as Larkin anticipates, the implications for tribes are significant.

“Anything we do is going to impact other tribes as well,” Urbina said.

The Pascua Yaqui Tribe will be allowed to exercise its new legal authority beginning Feb. 20.

The tribe, along with the two others allowed to prosecute some nonmembers, will conduct a pilot program in the lead-up to the law taking full effect in March 2015.

Urbina described the issue as an important civil-rights matter for Native Americans, and noted the Pascua Yaqui and a few other tribes stand at the forefront.

As he put it, “We’re the sharp end of the spear.”

He was just a boy when his dad was killed, leaving Bill Kelley much to learn about the man his dad was through the many letters and writings he left behind and from the people who knew and served with him.

“He was such a great writer,” Kelley said. “It was fascinating to read his letters, especially to his father.”

Victor Bruce Kelley was killed in Vietnam on April 28, 1965. He was the second Tucsonan killed in the war that lasted for more than a decade and claimed the lives of more than 58,000 Americans.

Bill Kelley, 59, was 10 years old when his father was killed, and has many memories of him. For example, he can recall his father terrifying him and his siblings by pretending to drive with his hands over his eyes while navigating mountain passes on a family trip in Germany where Bruce Kelley, as he was known, was stationed in the Army.

It wasn’t until adulthood, however, that Bill Kelley came to appreciate his father as a man of intellect, keen observation and curiosity.

The letters and notes the elder Kelley left behind helped his son to better understand the man he knew simply as his dad — a man who would serve his country in three wars, ultimately giving his life in an effort to save a comrade.

“In my reflections as I grew older, and certainly as I became a father myself, I would reflect on all of those things through his writings,” Kelley said.

Bruce Kelley’s intellect, analytical mind and inquisitiveness are evident throughout the writings, particularly in an early outline of a book he intended to write about his Vietnam experiences.

What we have often encountered in the field of advice is the reluctance of the Vietnamese to accept the recommendations offered. The reasons are as varied as the individual personalities involved. The most serious general observation has been a lack of aggressiveness in combat; the absence of battlefield desire to close with and destroy an enemy. This has continually hampered the ARVN’s (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) military effort.

Victor Bruce Kelley, 1965

Bruce Kelley was born on June 19, 1928.

His parents, Victor H. Kelley, a well-known professor at the University of Arizona, and Mary Kelley moved to Arizona from Kansas as the Great Depression ravaged rural America. The family originally settled in Flagstaff, where Victor H. Kelley was a Naval reservist and a professor at what was then called Arizona State Teachers College of Flagstaff, later to become Northern Arizona University.

The call to serve grabbed Bruce Kelley early on. He graduated from high school at 16 and was allowed to enlist in the U.S. Navy at 17, just as World War II was coming to a close. As a skinny teenager, he served in the Pacific theater for the final months of the war in 1945.

After a few years of service, the elder Kelley returned home to Tucson — where his father was a professor — and enrolled at the University of Arizona to study political science. While there, he earned his commission as a second lieutenant through the Army ROTC program.

He also met Patricia Hedgcock, whom he later clandestinely married in Florence in 1950. The newlyweds later held a proper marriage ceremony at Kelley’s new in-laws’ ranch near Sonoita.

The Kelley's had four children all together: Susan, Howard, David and Bill.

By 1952, he again felt a strong desire to serve. The country was at war in Korea, and though he had a growing family by then, Kelley was ready. In Korea, he earned the Bronze Star and a Combat Infantryman Badge.

After the war, he decided to try his hand at civilian life once more. He returned to Tucson and again enrolled at UA, this time to earn a master’s degree in education.

In 1955, Kelley packed up his young family and set out for Oxnard, California, where he taught high school and coached sports.

While there, Bill Kelley and his brother, David Kelley, were born.

But it wasn’t long before the call to service once again gripped him.

“He didn’t like teaching; he loved the military,” Bill Kelley said.

Kelley re-enlisted in the Army in 1958, where he once again earned distinction, eventually completing Airborne and Ranger training.

During these years, the Kelley family moved numerous times. As the young officer’s assignments changed, the family shifted from California to Texas, Kentucky, Georgia, and eventually Germany.

In Germany, Kelley was a staff officer in the same 3rd Armored Division in which one of America’s biggest icons, Elvis Presley, was serving.

In the fall of 1964, having earned the rank of captain, the Army decided to send Kelley to the then-little-known country of Vietnam, where thousands of American military advisers were training and counselingthe country’s leaders in an escalating internecine war against North Vietnam. It was during his service there that Kelley’s writings most clearly showed his analytical mind.

An ambivalence about the growing U.S. involvement in Vietnam was clearly at odds with his sense of duty. He questioned some of the policies at play in his writings to friends and in a commentary where he handwrote his thoughts next to passages clipped from an article titled “A Life Panel: The Lowdown From the Top U.S. Command in Saigon,” from a November 1964 issue of LIFE magazine.

I feel in my own heart that to abandon this cause would be a national tragedy — if not immediately, at least will in our lifetime. At the same time, I also feel to further commit our forces would be just as tragic. … I guess I can’t write the nice catch phrases home as to why I’m here like “safe for democracy,” “last outpost against communism,” “so the children won’t have to do it,” etc. I’m here because the Army sent me, I’m here to help another professional soldier (and the ARVN officer for better or worse is just that) do a job by providing him with my professional counsel.

Victor Bruce Kelley, 1965

“He would have been a general, no doubt in my mind,” Bob Ainsworth said. “Bruce was the greatest leader I ever knew.”

Ainsworth, 79, met Kelley in 1958, when they were stationed together at then-Camp Irwin in the deserts of San Bernardino County, California.

“He was kind of like my big brother, he looked out for me,” Ainsworth said from his home in Upland, California.

The two would go on to infantry and Airborne training, and served together several more times. Both later served in Germany and Vietnam at the same time, though at different posts.

Ainsworth, who spent 20 years in the Army, eventually retiring as a lieutenant colonel, remembers Kelley as someone with whom he used to pull practical jokes.

“I think we encouraged each other and challenged each other; that’s how we got in trouble,” he said.

He recalled when both men grew frustrated at the training in Airborne school that seemed geared toward absolute beginners. Basic things, Ainsworth said, like instructing soldiers on the proper end of a rifle to hold.

So the two set out to poke fun at the training manuals by writing a one-page sendup.

“It became a sensation,” Ainsworth said. So much so, however, that it caught the attention of the general in charge, who called the two satirists into his office for a stern dressing down.

For Ainsworth, this was the Bruce Kelley he remembers — a soldier at heart, a true intellectual and someone who found enjoyment in all aspects of life.

“He had a rough exterior, but underneath he was a big pussycat,” he said.

The Vietnamese boil everything they eat — rice being the basic food. ...I have found the food to be tasty but you’ll never get fat on it; I have no problems eating it (remembering my favorite soup as menudo should give you an insight to my oddball tastes) although many Americans can’t make it.

Victor Bruce Kelley, 1965

After completing his duties by mid-1965, Kelley was to be reassigned — but like so many servicemen before him, his young life was cut short amid a barrage of gunfire.

“It was sad; he was going to go to Leavenworth,” Bill Kelley said.

Ainsworth, who was serving farther north in Vietnam when he heard the news of his friend’s death, traveled south to Vinh Long to learn the circumstances. He found out Kelley had been reassigned, and his replacement already installed. But someone called in sick that day, and his friend volunteered to fill in.

Kelley and his co-workers learned that a unit of the South Vietnamese army — or the Army of the Republic of Vietnam — and an American adviser had been ambushed nearby. The American adviser had been injured, and his comrades were unable to reach him through sniper fire.

“Bruce, being the kind of guy he was, grabbed about four or five ARVN guys,” Ainsworth said.

The men headed out to rescue their comrades. Kelley left his armored vehicle in search of the wounded American. Locating the man, Kelley hoisted him over his shoulder, intending to carry him to safety.

That’s when a sniper’s bullet stuck Kelley in the head, killing him instantly.

He was 36 years old.

The VC are good. They’re not supreme, but they understand guerrilla warfare and they damn well employ tactics to fit their abilities. I’m eternally grateful that they do not have more imagination than they do, as they could — with little effort — quickly convert this war into a national disaster.

Victor Bruce Kelley, 1965

Ainsworth accompanied his comrade’s body to Tucson to attend his funeral. Victor Bruce Kelley was buried on May 7, 1965, in East Lawn Palms on East Grant Road.

He was awarded the Silver Star, the Soldier’s Medal, the Bronze Star, the Air Medal and a Purple Heart.

Despite losing his father at such a young age, Bill Kelley says he’s never been bitter or resentful.

“From the time I could remember, I knew that was a possibility,” he said.

He laughs a little at the naming of the bowling alley at Fort Knox, Kentucky, in honor of his father, who served there. “Kelley Alley” has since been rebuilt into a more auspicious training facility, the Kelley Combat Marksmanship Center.

The younger Kelley and his family attended the dedication ceremony in 2004.

“He loved it,” Kelley said of his dad’s military career. “This was what he chose to do.”

Child pornography was almost unheard of just 20 years ago.

Few outside of an underground community of producers and consumers of the material had access, and law enforcement efforts had driven that community deeply into the shadows.

But with the accessibility of the Internet, the demand for child pornography has exploded and the doors of access to the material have opened wide.

Today, police routinely arrest people for possession of child pornography, and prosecutors are bringing more offenders to court.

The Pima County Attorney’s Office prosecuted 38 people on child pornography charges in 2013, a more than twofold increase over four years.

In 1998, the County Attorney’s Office initiated seven cases against people suspected of child pornography, luring a minor for sexual purposes and related crimes. Last year, the number of new cases hit 51.

Child pornography boils the blood of Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall, who calls it “an extraordinary exploitation of kids.”

The Arizona Daily Star contacted the Tucson Police Department for comment in this story. Despite numerous requests, no one from the department’s unit that investigates Internet crimes against children made contact.

But some psychologists and defense attorneys argue the criminal-justice system should distinguish between child molesters and “non-contact” offenders who look at pornographic images of minors.

Under Arizona law, possession of child pornography is punishable by up to 24 years in prison, the same punishment given for a first-time child molestation offense. The maximum prison term for a first-time offense of luring a minor for sexual purposes is 15 years.

Defense attorney John Sando of the Pima County Public Defender’s Office said that can lead to unfair descrepancies.

Tucson police arrested Sando’s client Michael Ray Hill in January 2013 after an Internet service provider notified them of possible child pornography downloads.

After an investigation, police searched Hill’s home and found child pornography on his computer. He was charged with 10 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor.

Court documents said Hill frequented online chat rooms geared toward gay teens, where he asked boys to send him nude photos of themselves. Hill, 28, ultimately pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor and was sentenced, under a plea agreement, to five years in prison.

Sando called the punishment a “travesty” because of Hill’s disabilities and cognitive limitations. Both developmentally and physically disabled, Hill was nearly homebound and unable to go anywhere on his own, Sando said.

He said Hill recognizes what he did was wrong and feels shameful. But the attorney questions whether locking a man with limited cognitive abilities in prison for five years addresses the problem of child pornography.

“What’s the danger he poses to the community?” Sando asked. “It’s such a ridiculous, illogical sentencing structure.”

The lengthy prison sentences for child pornography possession leave many defendants little choice but to plead guilty to one or two counts rather gamble at trial and risk a lifetime behind bars, Tucson defense attorney Rick Lougee said.

“The jury, if they see these pictures, they would want to convict the lawyer and the defendant,” Lougee said.

Pattern of escalation

In decades past, collectors of child pornography were almost always child molesters, said Dr. Paul Simpson, a Tucson-based criminal forensic psychologist who has treated sex offenders for more than 30 years and conducts mental-health evaluations of defendants for Pima County Superior Court.

They often used clandestine pornography collections as a bridge between opportunities to molest children.

But the Internet has helped create a new class of sex offender: one without a history of abusing children.

With pornography readily available to anyone with an Internet connection, Simpson said many people find child pornography almost by accident.

While noting that understanding the behavior does not excuse the potential harm offenders cause, Simpson said some of the answers could be found in how the human brain functions.

As pornography consumption becomes compulsive, users often fall into a pattern of escalation. He argues that they could benefit from intervention and therapy as part of their punishment.

“If treated early, there is a good chance of successful treatment,” he said.

But left untreated, he said, the likelihood increases that these offenders, too, will escalate their behavior and eventually molest a child.

“Tip of the iceberg”

Whether they molest a child or look at a photo, people who view child pornography helped to create a market that thrives on the abuse of children, LaWall said.

The sentences for child pornography possession are justified when considering the abuse victims of the industry have suffered.

“When I think about what was done to those children it doesn’t offend me whatsoever,” she said.

Two recent high-profile prosecutions exemplify how the market for child pornography has grown, claiming more victims almost daily.

In one, a Tucson man was sentenced to more than 24 years in federal prison for molesting a toddler and broadcasting the abuse on the Internet.

“It’s totally frightening,” La Wall said. “There is no question whatsoever that we are only encountering the very tip of the iceberg.”