Concluded Order Was a Crime, Mecham Trial Witness Testifies

Arizona’s top police official testified at Gov. Evan Mecham’s impeachment trial Monday that he realized almost immediately that Mecham had committed a crime in ordering the official not to cooperate in an investigation of an alleged death threat.

“I was in shock over what he was saying, taken aback, speechless,” said Col. Ralph Milstead, director of the state Department of Public Safety.

Milstead quoted Mecham as telling him: “I don’t want you to help the attorney general hang me. Don’t tell him anything.”

Milstead said he had phoned the governor Nov. 15 to discuss a report that Lee Watkins, then a Mecham Administration official, had threatened to send a former Mecham aide on “a long boat ride” if she didn’t stop testifying before a grand jury investigating Mecham campaign finances.

Watkins has denied threatening the aide, Donna Carlson. And Milstead has said he cooperated with the attorney general’s office.

Milstead, whose testimony is crucial to the obstruction of justice charge against the governor, blurted out his statement regarding a possible Mecham crime during cross-examination by Mecham’s attorney, Fred Craft.

Craft asked why Milstead, in his report on the incident, quoted the governor’s words but not Milstead’s own part of the conversation.

“Because I’m not committing a crime,” Milstead said. “I’m not obstructing justice.”

“When did you conclude that the governor’s words constituted a crime?” asked Craft.

“As I’m hearing them and reflecting on them,” said Milstead, adding it took him “about two seconds” after hanging up the phone.

Milstead, the trial’s seventh witness, took the stand at the start of the second week of testimony. Mecham, the first U.S. governor to face an impeachment trial in six decades, has not attended the proceedings.

Mecham, 63, a first-term Republican, is accused in the impeachment proceedings of obstructing the attorney general’s investigation of the alleged death threat through his orders to Milstead.

The governor also is accused in 23 articles of impeachment of concealing a $350,000 campaign loan and misusing $80,000 in a state fund by loaning it to his auto dealership.

Mecham also faces a recall election May 17 and a criminal trial March 22 on felony charges accusing him of concealing the $350,000 loan.