By Bill Myers | Phoenix New Times
Phoenix prosecutors urged the release of a domestic violence defendant despite a history of similar charges and suspicions that he had raped his ex-wife – another in a series of failures that has some advocates wondering what’s going on in the city prosecutors office.
Forty-five-year-old Harry Propp was arrested in the early morning hours of April 19 after Phoenix police pulled his car over for a traffic stop, law enforcement records obtained by Phoenix New Times show. While searching his car for drugs, the cops discovered Propp was wanted on charges that he had attacked his ex-wife the previous November, the records show.
Propp had been charged with domestic violence at least twice before, in May 2011 and December 2014. He was also a suspect in at least six separate attacks on his ex-wife or her daughter, and police suspected him of having raped his ex-wife, the records show. Charges were dismissed in both of those cases.
Yet Prosecutor Jeff Hall asked Judge Thomas Scarduzio to release Propp on his own recognizance, and Propp walked out of jail within hours of his arrest. It all occurred the day after prosecutors learned that another former domestic violence defendant, Dwight Miles, had been charged with murder in the shooting death of his girlfriend, Chelsee Dennis.
