Jodi Arias was on suicide watch in her Maricopa County cell Wednesday night after telling a local TV station she would prefer death to life in prison after her conviction of first-degree murder in the death of her former boyfriend.
The 32-year-old, who has garnered international attention for the sordid details of her rocky love affair and savage murder of Travis Alexander, learned her fate at the end of a four-month-long trial.

If an Arizona congressman gets his way, he’ll be out of a job. And so will two-thirds of today’s U.S. House of Representatives, as well as half the Senate.
Rep. Matt Salmon, a Mesa Republican, recently introduced legislation to impose strict term limits on Congress, a proposal that in years past has been wildly popular with the public and dead on arrival in Washington.

Jennifer Longdon will no longer call Jeff Flake her U.S. senator.
The 53-year-old, who was paralyzed from the chest down in a Phoenix drive-by shooting eight years ago, is so enraged she can’t bring herself to use the honorific.

As the U.S. Senate begins debate today on sweeping legislation to overhaul the nation’s immigration system, the course of action in the House of Representatives over the next few months remains less certain.
Members of Arizona’s House delegation praised the Senate proposal for teeing up a long- overdue issue in Congress, even as its passage is far from ensured. They disagree, however, on what should come next.

MARICOPA — Inside a tiny Veterans of Foreign Wars post between Phoenix and Casa Grande, nine members of the Maricopa Gun Club were fretting one recent evening over the gun-control debate in Congress.
From a youth skeet-shooting coach to an Old West gunfight re-enactor, the aficionados have been watching closely as Democrats prepare to introduce new firearms restrictions in reaction to the Connecticut elementary-school shooting that killed 20 children and six school workers in December.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision on Arizona’s voter-registration law, which aims to keep illegal immigrants off the voter rolls but has made access difficult for some citizens, could come down to one swing justice if questions at Monday’s hearing provide any clues to opinions on the bench.
A lively hour of oral argument appeared to show the usual swing vote, Justice Anthony Kennedy, may reprise that role in a case that deals with election integrity and access to the voting booth. A number of controversial Arizona laws reviewed by the high court in recent years, including the immigration-enforcement measure known as Senate Bill 1070, have come down to split decisions.

Arizona has a steady record of wins defending its laws before the U.S. Supreme Court in the past few years.
Today, another Arizona law will be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. Approved by Arizona voters, it aims to keep ballots out of the hands of illegal immigrants by requiring anyone registering to vote to provide documentation of U.S. citizenship.

Jesus Gonzalez worked as a farm laborer and factory hand in Arizona. He lived in the United States for more than four decades. Earning citizenship, along with the right to vote, was a dream.
So he couldn’t believe it when, after finally taking the citizenship oath at the Yuma federal courthouse in 2005 and filling out his election paperwork, he received two notices from the state that his voter registration had been denied.