County prosecutors say they did not have enough evidence to charge an ex-student with misdemeanor threats and intimidation over his behavior toward University of Arizona faculty before he allegedly shot and killed a professor.
For the better part of a year, Murad Dervish sent emotionally charged emails to numerous faculty members in the UA Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences Department.
The UA Police Department investigated and asked the Pima County Attorney’s Office to prosecute. However, County Attorney Laura Conover said in a statement Monday evening that her office did not have enough evidence to charge Dervish — the man now charged with murdering hydrology professor Thomas Meixner on campus — with threats and intimidation in the months before Meixner’s Oct. 5 death.
“The University of Arizona Police Department did bring two proposed misdemeanor complaints about former student Murad Dervish to our attention, and both times those concerns were given our full attention,” Conover said.
She said the complaints about Dervish her office received pertained to employees other than Meixner.
According to a column reported by the Arizona Daily Star’s Tim Steller in the days after the shooting, Dervish’s emails to faculty members had escalated in tone during the past year. For example, in a Jan. 17 email to Christopher Castro, Meixner’s colleague in the hydrology department, Dervish wrote: “What do you and that piece of s*** **** trash Meixner think, I’m just gonna slink away into a corner while you **** me in the ****** *******?!! This incident is COMPLETELY HIS FAULT.”
Earlier Monday, UA President Robert C. Robbins released a timeline of actions the university took to address Dervish’s pattern of troubling behavior toward Meixner and others, saying the UA Police Department brought evidence to the county attorney once in the spring and again in September in attempts to get Dervish charged.
While a UA spokesperson said Tuesday that the school is “cooperating with the Pima County Attorney’s Office as they pursue criminal charges against the former student,” it “will not be releasing additional information at this time.”
The Arizona Daily Star has filed a public records request for documents related to both complaints about Dervish sent to the county attorney, but it is unclear at this point which emails or other documentation UAPD submitted as evidence.
It wasn’t enough for prosecutors at the time.
Conover said, “In neither instance did the facts of the complaint meet the evidentiary requirements for charging him with the crime of threats and intimidation at that time,” as outlined under Arizona law.
According to Arizona Revised Statute 13-1202, a person commits misdemeanor level threatening or intimidating if they threaten by word or conduct:
To cause physical injury to another person or serious damage to the property of another; or
To cause, or in reckless disregard to causing, serious public inconvenience including, but not limited to, evacuation of a building, place of assembly or transportation facility; or
To cause physical injury to another person or damage to the property of another in order to promote, further or assist in the interests of or to cause, induce or solicit another person to participate in a criminal street gang, a criminal syndicate or a racketeering enterprise.
“Our office bases criminal charges on the evidence presented, which must rise to the Constitutional standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” Conover said. “The complaints brought by UA police in April and again in September did not have sufficient proof to meet that standard, and therefore no charges were filed.”
