Local opinion: Laura Conover's ethics, performance strong

Re: the March 28 article “Vote out Pima County Attorney Laura Conover.”

Mr. Jette has made some quite serious-sounding ethical allegations about County Attorney Laura Conover in these pages. The major basis of these allegations is that Conover has voluntarily entered into a diversion agreement with the Arizona Bar. Jette alleges “Ms. Conover offered neither an apology nor any substantive facts for the electorate to assess her conduct.” But what conduct exactly? Jette never specifies what Ms. Conover has done that should be censured by the electorate: either he doesn’t know the facts, or he won’t say.

The original bar complaint against Conover is not yet public information, nor would it be clear to most folks what exact behavior Ms. Conover is accepting responsibility for by entering such a diversion agreement. Entering into such an agreement neither requires a finding of wrongdoing by the Bar, nor admission of any wrongdoing by the subject, but common sense indicates that there is some actual behavior that could result in Bar action behind acceptance of such an agreement. Conover should correct that lack of public information about the circumstances of her acceptance of diversion.

As a former prosecuting attorney, combining my own knowledge of the history of the Louis Taylor case, Conover’s 2020 campaign, and the ethical obligations of a state’s attorney lead me to the conclusion that the actual behavior at the heart of the diversion agreement is Conover’s use of social media during her campaign for office that could potentially have led the public to infer an appearance of conflict of interest in her subsequent representation of Pima County in the Louis Taylor case. Specifically, Conover did state on social media during her campaign that she had done research on the Taylor case in the past and that she wished to see Taylor exonerated. I could be wrong, of course, and I would welcome correction by any party, if so.

The Taylor case is one especially fraught in regard to public appearances given its entanglement with historical and current racism in our justice system, allegations of prosecutorial misconduct in the original prosecution, and our community’s rush to judgment in the face of tragedy. Conover owed conflicting ethical obligations to multiple interests: a duty to serve justice by exonerating anyone wrongly convicted by our jurisdiction in the past; a duty to Pima County to protect our interests, including against the financial consequences of a wrongful conviction suit by Taylor; and a duty to the public and the justice system not to create any appearance of a conflict of interest between those crosscutting duties: It would be a difficult situation for even the most experienced career prosecutor to navigate.

Given the pressures and pace of a campaign for office by an attorney with limited experience as a state’s attorney, for Conover to have failed to avoid all possible appearance of such a conflict is not terribly surprising. Most importantly, however, any such failure on her part does not disqualify her for office, nor is it likely to have been harmful to her clients — Pima County and its citizens. Mr. Jette owes the voters of Pima County his best case for how exactly her actions have been harmful based on actual facts, not merely general accusations. Ms. Conover owes her constituents a fuller disclosure and explanation of the circumstances leading her to accept the diversion agreement.

Objective data on violent crime in our community demonstrates that public safety has significantly improved during Conover’s time in office. She has also followed through on many campaign promises of significant reform that led to her election. The political blandishments of her opponent alleging an increase in crime under Conover’s administration are simply contrary to objective statistics and evidence. Crime rates and public safety are headed in the right direction in our community, and that is partly due to Conover’s progressive administration of our County Attorney’s office.