Gov. Evan Mecham broke the law and lied about it to the state Senate, a prosecutor said today in urging the Senate to convict the impeached first-term Republican and remove him from office. Prosecutor William French said in closing arguments that Mecham broke the law in borrowing $80,000 from the governor's protocol fund for his auto dealership. ``He has violated the law ... He has uttered untruths to you,'' French said. Earlier, prosecutor Paul Eckstein accused Mecham of showing ``a lifetime of reckless disregard for the reputation of anyne who has stood in his path to political power.'' ``Respondent (Mecham) has demonstrated for all the world to see his plain inability to tell the truth,' Eckstein said. ``How much proof is required to demonstrate that respondent puffed, exaggerated, misremembered, dissembled and out-and-out lied.'' Eckstein said Mecham's conduct in office ``was not just offensive, it was grossly offensive.'' Senators must decide whether to convict Mecham on two impeachment charges issued by the Arizona House. A third charge was dismissed. A vote could come late today or Tuesday, climaxing five weeks of trial, lawmakers said. A conviction would force the first-term Republican out of office. The first impeachment count accuses the governor of trying to thwart an investigation of an alleged death threat by a state official. Mecham contended he did not intend to beak the law and that he was not fully informed of the seriousness of the alleged threat. ``Ignorance of the law is no defense,'' Eckstein told senators. But Mecham's defense lawyer, Fred Craft, told senators, ``You're being asked to politically assassinate the governor.'' ``He doesn't resign (as Mecham has been urged to) because he's not guilty of these charges,'' Craft said. ``He dares to right city hall and he's doing it at great cost to himself.'' Craft said in his closing argument that the allegation was based on a 90-second conversation with Department of Public Safety Director Ralph Milstead. Craft accused prosecutors of seeking to ``twist and torture it in such a way that it accounts for an obstruction of justice.'' As closing arguments proceeded, a trumpeter played ``Taps'' outside the Senate building as a group of men carried a mock coffin labeled, ``Herein Lies the Right to an Elected Governor.'' The prosecutor accused Mecham of making a number of statements during his Senate testimony that ``are either wrong'' or were contradicted by other witnesses. Among the examples cited by Eckstein was the governor's testimony, recanted a day later, that his former chief bodyguard had stolen a report from the governor's office. Nonetheless, Eckstein said, Mecham and Department of Public Safety Director Ralph Milstead gave ``remarkably similar'' accounts of their Nov. 15 conversation in which Mecham allegedly ordered Milstead not to cooperate with the attorney general's investigation of the alleged threat. Mecham admitted in Senate testimony that he told Milstead, ``The attorney general is out to get me and I'm not going to help him in any way.'' Mecham sat at the defense table during closing arguments. When he arrived at the Capitol, he was cheered by a group of well-wishers as he walked into the Senate building behind bodyguards. He said nothing but smiled and flashed a thumbs-up signal at the crowd. Mecham, 63, who took office in January 1987, has maintained he is innocent of wrongdoing. He also is accused of misusing $80,000 from the governor's protocol fund by loaning it to his auto dealership. Last week the Senate dismissed a third charge that Mecham concealed a $350,000 campaign loan, the subject of the governor's April 21 criminal trial. Some senators said hearing testimony on that allegation could have prejudiced his criminal trial. However, Democrats acknowledged that the real reason they favored dismissing the charge was to ensure a Senate trial verdict well before the scheduled May 17 gubernatorial recall election. A two-thirds vote of the 30-member Senate is required for conviction. Lawmakers also could bar Mecham from holding any future public office. If convicted, Mecham would become the seventh U.S. governor removed from office by impeachment. The prosecution contends the governor's protocol fund _ created with inaugural ball proceeds _ was a public fund and that Mecham Pontiac needed the $80,000 loan to meet its July 1987 payroll. However, the defense said the fund was private money and that the loan was intended merely to provide a higher interest rate for the fund. Mecham Pontiac was in good financial shape and could have borrowed the money elsewhere, according to testimony by the governor's son, Dennis, who is general manager of the dealership. But the day after he testified last week, Dennis Mecham announced the dealership was being sold. Sales had suffered due to the ``avalanche of negative publicity'' about the governor, he said. The allegation regarding the death threat has boiled down to Mecham's word against that of Department of Public Safety Director Ralph Milstead. He testified that Mecham ordered him not to cooperate with the attorney general's investigation of the alleged threat by state official Lee Watkins against former top Mecham aide Donna Carlson. At the time of the alleged threat in November, Ms. Carlson was about to testify before the state grand jury regarding the $350,000 campaign loan. Senators, meanwhile, said they knew how important the impeachment vote will be. If the governor is allowed to return to his job, ``I think there'll be terrible chaos in state government,'' said Minority Leader Alan Stephens, a Democrat. Lawmakers' own careers also may hang in the balance, some senators said.
