The Republican candidate for Maricopa County recorder was fired by the county’s public defender's office in 2010, just months after the office hired him.
According to the county’s employment records, the public defender’s office hired Justin Heap, who is now a state representative, in August 2010, less than a year after he was admitted to the state Bar of Arizona in December 2009.
Less than three months later, the office terminated his employment, according to a Nov. 2, 2010, letter signed by James Haas, who led the county’s public defender’s office at the time.
“This release is due to your unsatisfactory completion of your initial probationary period,” according to the letter.
The reason for the firing remains unclear.
Haas, who retired in 2020, said he didn’t remember Heap, noting Heap’s relatively short tenure occurred over a decade ago in an office that had more than 400 employees.
But Haas did say that it was rare to terminate new hires before the end of the probationary period.
Maricopa County Public Defender’s Office records obtained under Arizona’s Public Records Law show Heap was one of two employees dismissed due to unsatisfactory completion of their probationary period in 2010.
Heap refused to say why he was dismissed and, in a written statement, claimed he wasn’t fired.
“I have been blessed with a great legal career defending the individual liberties and rights of everyday Arizonans,” Heap said. “Any assertion that I was fired from the public defenders office is 100% false.”
Heap said that, in conversations with the public defender’s office, “they made it clear that anyone hired prior to 2018 was hired on probationary status, and that the form in question was a ‘standard form’ given to all probationary employees who did not stay on as full-time employees following their probationary period.”
But Haas, the former public defender who ran the office for decades, gave a different explanation.
He confirmed Heap’s account that, in the past, all new employees were hired on probationary status. That meant they could be terminated “without cause,” meaning they did not have a right to appeal the termination.
However, Haas said that did not mean the office did not have a reason when it terminated an employee like Heap for “unsatisfactory completion” of the probationary period.
“It doesn't mean there wasn't cause, you can pretty much guarantee there was,” Haas said. “It doesn't make any sense that an office would hire someone, invest in training them and then just let them go.”
That cause could cover a variety of issues for an attorney. In one case, Haas recalled, a new hire was fired for failing to show up to required training.
Haas reiterated he doesn’t remember the specific circumstance in Heap’s case.
“The bottom line is something was wrong,” he said.
Heap is still a practicing attorney in Arizona and has a clean record with no complaints with the state Bar of Arizona.
According to his state financial disclosures and business records, Heap owns his own law firm in Mesa that he first incorporated in February 2010, months before he was hired as a public defender. When he first ran for the Legislature in 2022, Heap listed the business’ location in Show Low, about 150 miles away from the Mesa-area district he was later elected to represent.
An oath signed by Heap in August 2009 — the year before he started work with the public defender’s office — shows he volunteered as a prosecutor with the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office under former embattled County Attorney Andrew Thomas, the Arizona Capitol Times reported.
However, again, it’s unclear what Heap’s role was under the county attorney. The Capitol Times reported that former Deputy County Attorney Phil MacDonnell could not recall what work Heap performed.
The uncertainty about Heap’s professional background is the latest question surrounding a candidate who hopes to take over the office in charge of voter registration, early voting and tracking titles, liens and other important documents in the country’s fourth-largest county.
Heap previously faced criticism after the Secretary of State’s Office found reasonable cause to believe he violated campaign finance law for failing to report five donations to his legislative campaign totaling about $2,500 from political action committees. An investigation into those allegations is ongoing, a spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office said.
