John "Jack" Wilenchik, the lawyer for former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, on Wednesday asked a federal appellate panel for what he called an act of "judicial housekeeping."

With President Donald Trump pardoning Arpaio in 2017, the federal judge in Phoenix overseeing the criminal contempt of court case against him granted his motion to dismiss his case. But that judge—U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton of the District of Arizona—declined to vacate the court record in the case, finding the president's pardon did "not erase a judgment of conviction, or its underlying legal and factual findings."

Wilenchik on Wednesday told a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that Bolton had erred, and that his client's presidential pardon should have triggered an "automatic" vacatur of the district court orders in the case.

"It's not fair to say you're forever convicted but you cannot appeal," Wilenchik said.

But Wilenchik's argument was met with questions from the three judges considering the appeal—Ninth Circuit Judges Jay Bybee, N. Randy Smith and Daniel Collins—indicating that Arpaio's request for vacatur might be deficient or moot since he'd never been sentenced or served jail time as a result of the conviction. Smith, in particular, seemed skeptical that Arpaio had presented a sufficient reason to overturn the district court's decision.

Under questioning from Smith, Wilenchik said the appropriate standard of review for Bolton's decision was "abuse of discretion."

"What part of the court's order was an abuse?" Smith asked. "What law was misapplied? Frankly, I'm having a hard time understanding what you say she did wrong."

Smith returned to the subject with James Pearce, an appellate attorney in the Department of Justice's Criminal Division, at the podium.

"Did you ever say to the court, 'Madam, you have a discretionary decision to make here and these are the factors you should consider?'" Smith asked.

The DOJ notably declined to defend Bolton's vacatur decision, prompting the Ninth Circuit to appoint Boies Schiller Flexner partner Christopher Caldwell as a special prosecutor to defend the lower court's ruling. But Caldwell too got a grilling from Smith over whether Bolton had sufficiently weighed the appropriate factors considering Arpaio's motion to vacate.

Caldwell said that the district court did consider an amicus brief filed by civil plaintiffs who had filed the lawsuit against Arpaio and the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office that resulted in a finding that Arpaio's policies led to racial profiling and unlawful traffic stops of Latinos. Those plaintiffs, Caldwell said, had laid out the case for there being a public interest in maintaining a full and public record of the criminal case against Arpaio.

"Mr. Arpaio got what he wanted out of the pardon. There was nothing inequitable or unfair as a result," Caldwell said. Even the DOJ brief arguing to vacate the record below outlined the "egregious facts" underlying Arpaio's conviction, he said.

"The public interest in terms of the victims of Mr. Arpaio's contemptuous conduct were known to the court and were presented to the court," Caldwell said.