Word: connore
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...Connor's devotion to detail soon became legendary. She once offered an amendment to a bill merely to insert a missing, but important, comma. As majority leader, she learned to use both tact and toughness to cajole colleagues into achieving consensus on divisive issues. When the usual flurry of eleventh-hour legislation delayed adjournment of the Arizona legislature in 1974, one committee chairman was furious at what he considered O'Connor's failure to finish up the senate's business. Said he to O'Connor: "If you were a man, I'd punch...
While critics focus on her ERA and abortion votes, O'Connor notes that her legislative achievements ranged from tax relief to flood-control funding to restoring the death penalty. "She worked interminable hours and read everything there was," says Democratic State Senator Alfredo Gutierrez. "It was impossible to win a debate with her. We'd go on the floor with a few facts and let rhetoric do the rest. Not Sandy. She would overwhelm you with her knowledge...
Although highly successful in the senate, O'Connor grew restless and decided to return to law. She ran and won a spot on the Maricopa County Superior Court bench in 1974. Explained her senate colleague Anne Lindeman: "At the end of her term she was at a crossroads. She had to choose between politics and the law. She was more comfortable with the law." Said O'Connor about the law: "It is marvelous because it is always changing...
...trial judge, O'Connor was stern but fair. At least twice, colleagues recall, she advised defendants to get new attorneys because their lawyers had been unprepared. After a Scottsdale mother of two infants pleaded guilty to passing four bad checks totaling $3,500, she begged for mercy from O'Connor, claiming the children would become wards of the state. The father had abandoned the family. O'Connor calmly sentenced the middle-class woman to five to ten years in prison, saying, "You should have known better." But when she got back to her chambers she broke into...
Judge O'Connor did not hesitate to order the death penalty for Mark Koch, then 23, who had been found guilty of murder for agreeing to knife another man in return for a $3,300 fee. The contract killing stemmed from a dispute over drugs. (Koch has since appealed the verdict and been granted a new trial...