Criticizing Bragg, Arizona Refuses to Send Murder Suspect to New York

On Feb. 8, a woman was found dead in a Manhattan hotel room, bludgeoned to death with an iron.

This week, the police announced that a 26-year-old man suspected of committing the crime had been arrested in Arizona, where he was accused of stabbing another woman a few days after the homicide in New York. A Manhattan prosecutor flew to Arizona to discuss bringing the man back to face charges.

In most homicide cases across the country, it would be a routine extradition. But on Wednesday, an Arizona prosecutor refused, saying she did not believe Alvin L. Bragg, Manhattan’s district attorney, could be trusted to keep him behind bars.

Rachel Mitchell, the Maricopa County attorney, said at a news conference on Wednesday that her team would not work with Mr. Bragg, whose office is seeking to charge the man, Raad Almansoori, in the killing of 38-year-old Denisse Oleas-Arancibia.

“Having observed the treatment of violent criminals in the New York area by the Manhattan D.A. there, Alvin Bragg,” Ms. Mitchell told reporters, “I think it’s safer to keep him here and keep him in custody, so that he cannot be out doing this to individuals either in our state, county, or anywhere in the United States.”

With that statement, which a spokeswoman later tried to temper, a local New York City story was swept into a national debate over politics and crime, a cyclone fanned by Mr. Bragg’s prosecution of former President Donald J. Trump on charges that he orchestrated the cover-up of a hush-money payment to a porn star in an attempt to conceal her story of an affair before the 2016 election.

Both prosecutors have national profiles: Ms. Mitchell, a Republican, was tapped in 2018 to play a key role in the Senate confirmation hearings of one of Mr. Trump’s Supreme Court nominees. Mr. Bragg, a Democrat, has been a lightning rod for complaints by Mr. Trump and his supporters that he is being persecuted as he seeks another term in the White House.

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