| NEWS | Sponsel from p 15 think, have looked the other way. Now more light is going on this.” Even inside the Maricopa County At- torney’s Office, Sponsel’s involvement in the botched prosecutions of local protest- ers raised eyebrows. One prosecutor who declined to be named said that staff in the agency were “dumbfounded” by the deci- sion to accuse the protesters of being part of a street gang. “A lot of us just thought it was a stretch,” the prosecutor said. Through Jennifer Liewer, a spokesper- son for the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, Sponsel and Adel declined to com- ment on the new notice of claim or the past criminal case involving Rourke and Mar- tin. Liewer also declined to comment, cit- ing the “pending civil litigation.” Jacob Faussette, an attorney represent- ing Martin and Rourke, did not respond to Phoenix New Times’ request for comment. Rourke and Martin are accusing Spon- sel of fabricating the murder conspiracy al- legations, lying to a grand jury, and chronically withholding exculpatory evi- dence from their defense attorneys. With Sponsel and the Maricopa County Attor- ney’s Office under scrutiny for the botched prosecutions, they’re hoping that their claim and potential lawsuit will carry more weight. Rourke and Martin were first indicted by a grand jury in November 2016 on charges of conspiring to commit first-de- gree murder. Law enforcement officials and prosecutors accused Rourke and Martin of hatching a scheme to murder Justin Rourke, Donald’s brother, and Martin’s son. According to court records and the no- tice of claim, the basis for the murder con- spiracy theory allegations stemmed from a confidential informant and an investiga- tion involving U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, To- bacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) agents and Mesa Police Department detec- tives. In 2014, ATF agents started working with Allen Burns, the informant, after he agreed to cooperate in exchange for a re- duced federal prison sentence in his case. As part of this agreement, Sponsel, who had been prosecuting Burns for felony shoplifting in Maricopa County, dropped the case — an arrangement that Rourke and Martin’s defense attorneys in the mur- der conspiracy case say was never dis- closed to them. Based on information from Burns, the ATF suspected Rourke of plotting to kill a member of a rival gang, court documents state. They opened an investigation into Rourke and heavily relied on Burns during the process. At the time, Rourke, who has several past felony convictions, was incarcerated in federal prison after getting convicted of felony firearm possession and distributing methamphetamine in 2014. ATF agents Donald Rourke. Courtesy of Donald Rourke and Mesa detectives allegedly listened to jail calls between Rourke, Burns, and Mar- tin in which they discussed a plan to use Burns to kill Justin Rourke, according to court records. Law enforcement officials also flew Burns out to Wichita, Kansas, to meet with Martin, where they allegedly planned out the murder in detail. The case was eventually presented to a grand jury by Sponsel, who returned the murder con- spiracy indictments against both Rourke and Martin in November 2016. Martin was arrested in Kansas and extradited to Ari- zona, and Rourke, who was already in fed- eral custody in Colorado, was also extradited to Arizona. In a phone interview, Rourke, who’s now 41 and lives in the Navajo Nation in Arizona, said that the murder conspiracy allegations are “completely false” and that Burns and the ATF concocted the whole narrative. He acknowledged his past crimi- nal history and involvement in the Warrior Society but declined to discuss the matters in detail, citing his proximity to other members on the reservation and not want- ing to cause “backlash.” “I did a lot of things, yes I did. I’ve never denied that. I’ve done my time, I paid my dues,” Rourke said. “April has a history of doing things her way. That’s proven by the Black Lives Matter case. She lied to a grand jury to get an indictment. She did the same thing in my case.” Despite the severity of the allegations against Rourke and Martin, the case went nowhere and languished for years. Accord- ing to the notice of claim, Sponsel repeat- edly refused to produce records related to the investigation into the defendants and the arrangement with Burns, the confiden- tial informant — despite numerous orders from the judge on the case to do so. Mean- while, both Rourke and Martin >> p 21 17 phoenixnewtimes.com | CONTENTS | FEEDBACK | OPINION | NEWS | FEATURE | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | FILM | CAFE | MUSIC | PHOENIX NEW TIMES JULY 1ST – JULY 7TH, 2021
