So with avi's help I've been trying to figure out what the deal with the jury trial claims is, and it now seems very clear to me that Arpaio was not entitled to a jury trial. It's a red herring raised by the right-wing media, and an annoying one because it sounds good. Who wants to be against jury trials, after all?
I've also run into a third line of defense: Joe Arpaio was doing what he was legally required to do under state law, while federal law preserved his right to do it; the court orders he defied were therefore unconstitutional. The thing is, I don't have to know whether they're right about that (and I suspect they're wrong about federal law) to comment on that: the
collateral bar rule prohibits people from defying a court order while it's in effect.
The collateral bar rule limits the grounds on which a person who has disobeyed a court order can challenge that order to avoid being punished for criminal contempt. At its core, the rule generally prevents such a person from challenging the merits of the order, even if the order infringed on constitutional rights. In addition, the rule generally prevents such a person from challenging the court's jurisdiction to have issued the order. The rule thus forces people to obey erroneous and invalid court orders and to challenge them directly (if at all), unless they are willing to incur the cost of punishment.
Now is this rule worrying? I find it a bit worrying to have it enforced when it comes to individual liberty, but I think it's a good thing where government power is concerned. I suspect Arpaio's defenders would feel the opposite if they thought about this at all: it's fine to have court orders which violate people's individual rights, but not to stop the government from doing its job, dammit! But still, it's a rule which Arpaio, as the top law-enforcement officer for a county with more people with more people than 24 US states, should have been familiar with. It's not a fucking defense.
Also, while we're on the subject of civil liberties: Joe Arpaio
used a fake grand jury to subpoena documents on two newspaper reporters who covered his shady real-estate listings, then when they wrote about this had the arrested; the first case of journalists being arrested for something they published in the history of the US as an independent country.
And even for people who feel like civil liberties aren't important,
this should bother "blue lives matter" types who claim to care about police officers: he misappropriated $80 million mostly meant for police officer salaries to go after illegal immigrants and start corruption probes against his critics. He also spent some of that money on personal vacations to Honduras, Puerto Rico, and Disneyworld.