Independent voters don’t have many contested races in Maricopa County in which they can sway the outcome with Arizona primary elections roughly two months away.

Gov. Doug Ducey has been in office for 1,942 days, and has made 71 judicial appointments over that span, but his picks will have a lasting impact on Arizona long after he leaves office.

Since conservatives got on board with revamping Arizona’s sentencing laws, bills to do that no longer lay unheard, not considered. And as the movement has taken hold over the past few years, a host of groups and people have made their presence known at the Legislature. Following are some of them.

Several bills to revamp criminal justice in Arizona appear to be on life support after the Republican House Judiciary chair decided to hold a trio of bills in retaliation to his own bill being held.

In training materials recently obtained by the ACLU of Arizona, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office (MCAO) refers to the people it prosecutes using the slur “crazy” and paints people with psychiatric disabilities as liars and obstacles to winning a conviction – not as human beings worthy of respect.

Allister Adel, an attorney in private practice and former executive director of the Maricopa County Bar Association, will be Maricopa County Attorney for the next year.

The Arizona Supreme Court has assigned a special outside counsel to investigate ethics complaints against newly appointed Justice Bill Montgomery and celebrity prosecutor Juan Martinez.

The next Maricopa County Attorney will come from a pool of eight applicants, all of whom say they will run in 2020 if appointed.

Maybe it’s time for prosecutors like Barbara LaWall to stop defending the status quo and embrace a more effective justice system based on data and evidence. It has worked in Texas, Utah, Georgia and 29 other states. And unless Arizonans are somehow more crime-prone than the rest of the country, it will work here, too.

On this edition of The Breakdown, our reporters discuss Mark Brnovich, Criminal Justice Reform, and Gov. Doug Ducey's latest court appointment.