Will sheriff be held accountable in Green Acre flub?

The owners of the Gilbert dog boarding kennel find themselves charged once again with multiple counts of animal cruelty, stemming from the deaths of 21 dogs last summer.

Todd and MaLeisa Hughes each face 21 felony and seven misdemeanor counts of cruelty to animals and one count each of fraud.

The couple's daughter and son-in-law, Logan and Austin Flake, weren't charged in the new indictment.

Which leads to a question: will anyone anyone in the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office be facing charges? For lying to or misleading the original grand jury perhaps?

Answer: no.

"There never was any finding by the judge, by anyone, that the grand jury was intentionally misled or that false information was provided," Jerry Cobb, spokesman for the Maricopa County Attorney's Office, told me.

Perhaps because the original charges were dismissed before the case got that far?

Both the Hugheses and the Flakes were originally indicted last fall on multiple counts of animal cruelty after 21 dogs died in June, apparently suffocating after being left overnight in a 9x12 room. The Flakes, college students who live in Utah, were in Gilbert taking care of the dogs for a few days while the Hugheses were on vacation in Florida.

The couples attributed the dogs' deaths to a "freak accident," one that occurred when a dog chewed through a wire, cutting off electricity to the room's air conditioner in the middle of the night.

Sheriff's investigators disputed that, saying the evidence showed otherwise.

At the time the two couples were originally charged, both Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery hailed the indictments. Montgomery called the original indictment "the result of a thorough review of the extensive investigation into this incident and a decision to seek charges based on the objective facts."

Yet two months later, Montgomery dropped all charges other than one count each of fraud against the Hugheses. This, after the Flakes' attorney, Dennis Wilenchik, accused a sheriff's investigators of lying to the grand jury.

Wilenchik, in a motion to dismiss the original charges, pointed out that sheriff's investigators testified to the grand jury that the air conditioner was "on, all night" and speculated that the room was likely just kept too hot -- never mentioning that the sheriff's own HVAC investigator had determined it was "very likely" that the evaporative coil had frozen during the night due to a lack of routine maintenance, causing the unit to fail.

In addition, Wilenchik wrote, records from Salt River Project showed that a dramatic drop in electrical usage during the wee hours that night, "consistent with a failed air conditioning unit". Yet grand jurors apparently weren't told that either.

Wilenchik contended that evidence showed the kennel's air-conditioning unit had stopped working because of a dirty air filter.

Which might explain why the owners, the people responsible for routine maintenance, were recharged while the Flakes were not.

Montgomery, in a written statement today, said the dismissal of the original charges "provided us with a critical window of opportunity to review additional information that called into question the initial theory of the case."

The question is, did it also provide Montgomery with a critical window of opportunity to determine whether sheriff's investigators, in their zeal to get an indictment in a high-profile case, misled the grand jury?

Detective Marie Trombi testified to the original grand jury that "the air was working fine all night" while contract veterinarian Bernard Mangone speculated the room was simply kept too hot, according to Wilenchik.

Cobb says the sheriff's investigators were responding, at the time, to the defenses' initial theory.

"They were refuting the claim that the air conditioner lost power because a wire was cut to it," Cobb said. "The air conditioner never lost power."

It wasn't until later, Cobb says, that investigators realized the compressor wasn't working.

Meanwhile, Arpaio praised his detectives, saying they "did an outstanding job on all aspects into the deaths last year of 21 dogs
at the Green Acres Boarding facility."

So outstanding that the Flakes, son and daughter-in-law of U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, have filed a $8 million claim against Maricopa County, contending that Arpaio and his investigators "constructed a conspiracy" to charge them with animal cruelty.

It seems we will never know whether this was a matter of sloppy police work or criminal behavior that left two people unfairly facing dozens of felony charges.

One thing is clear, though. We know who will pay for it.

Open your wallets, people. Again, that is.