Serna settling in at district attorney’s office
DA ’very selective’ on new hires
Marco Serna wants there to be a smooth transition into his new role as Santa Fe’s district attorney.
The 33-year-old Santa Fe and Espanola-raised Democrat has already been working in the office for about a month, and he’s now getting used to his job as office manager since he was sworn in at the beginning of the year to prosecute crime in Santa Fe, Rio Arriba and Los Alamos counties.
“It’s actually a little bit of everything,” Serna said of his new duties in a recent interview. “You’re ensuring that the office is running properly and as efficiently as possible because we do receive so many cases a year, whether they are
misdemeanor or felony cases.”
Part of his job is bringing on his own people. He said he has already interviewed candidates for various positions, but he’s not going to bring new hires on too soon.
“I’m going to (transition) at a pace that’s beneficial to the office,” he said. “I didn’t want to just come in and bring people in for the sake of ‘These are my people, I’m going to bring them in and that’s it.’ I’ve been very selective in the people that I’ve considered . ... I’m not going to rush to appoint people for the sake of appointing them.”
Serna has made at least one major hire — his predecessor and former campaign opponent, Jennifer Padgett, as one of his chief deputies.
Padgett was appointed DA last January by Gov. Susana Martinez when Angela “Spence” Pacheco announced she wasn’t going to serve the last year of her term. Serna narrowly beat out Padgett and Maria SanchezGagne in the Democratic primary in June, then won the general election over Republican Yvonne Chicoine.
In something of a surprise, Padgett hired Serna in December, allowing him to learn the case management system, among other things, as he transitioned into the district attorney’s position.
Although Padgett and Serna were political rivals for a brief period, Serna said he and others in the office value her presence. He said he’s a little more of a political progressive than Padgett — who’d been registered as a Republican, Green and independent in the past, and was part of Gov. Martinez’s Republican administration before becoming a Democrat to run for DA last year — especially when it comes to officer-involved shootings and how to prosecute drug-related crimes.
But he said they see eye-to-eye on most other things.
“She has provided me with a lot of good insight into the office and how she was running it,” Serna said. “Once we actually got together when I came in, we started brainstorming and came up with some ideas that I think we’re going to be able to execute pretty effectively. The staff has grown to appreciate what she brought to the office when she was appointed. To be honest, I’ve grown to really respect her and trust her.”
Chief Deputy Juan Valencia, part of Pacheco’s team, is going to retire after the double homicide trial of Ricardo Martinez, who is accused of shooting and killing two Santa Fe teenagers in October 2014. The trial is slated to start Tuesday.
Susan Stinson and Ben Schrope, part of the office dating back to Pacheco’s tenure, will round out Serna’s trio of chief deputies, jobs with a “midpoint” salary of about $94,000.
Beneath them are six deputies, followed by senior trial attorneys, assistants and then associates.
Serna said he’s going to hire a deputy that he said the media would know, but he’s holding out on identifying that person.
“I’m not going to give you his name — or her name — because we’re working on it,” he said.
One of Serna’s first orders of business is putting together a committee to determine if the Santa Fe police officer who shot suspected armed robber Herman Flores last January will face criminal charges or if the shooting was justified
Serna is currently on the committee to make a recommendation to Albuquerque District Attorney Raul Torrez on whether former Albuquerque police officers Keith Sandy and Dominique Perez should be re-tried in the shooting death of homeless camper James Boyd in March 2014. Serna said the decision should be made soon.
Santa Fe shooting case
Serna said he wants to use a similar committee, made up of other district attorneys from around the state, to determine if SFPD detective John Van Etten should face charges for shooting Flores.
Flores, 31, died in an exchange of gunfire with police at a Cerrillos Road Motel 6 after he allegedly had used a handgun to rob a nearby Walmart. A witness to the shooting told the Journal the next day that Flores fired the first shot.
Serna said during his election campaign that having a district attorney review police shootings by officers with whom the DA’s office works regularly on criminal cases could pose a conflict.
“I don’t believe that my office should be the one to investigate or determine whether or not a shooting is justified within our jurisdiction, so right now the best option I have is to do what Raul Torrez did with the Boyd shooting committee,” Serna said.
He said he’ll speak to other prosecutors about being on the Flores case committee after a decision on the Boyd shooting is made.
As for long-term plans, Serna is still strong on his platform of providing treatment for low-level drug offenders and he wants to see more programs like Santa Fe’s Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program, which permits an arresting city officer to allow a suspect go to treatment instead of immediately filing criminal charges.
“I think we need to shed more light on the addiction issue and treating it as an addiction,” he said. “I have family and friends who suffer from addiction. Growing up in Rio Arriba, you see the effects on the community.”
Serna said he would really like to make a dent in the addiction issue in Rio Arriba, which has the highest rate of heroin overdose deaths in the country, according to the most recent data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. He likes to tell the story of how he and his brother used to walk from their mother’s jewelry store in Española to a bank a quarter of a mile away with a cash deposit bag when they were children.
“Now, I don’t think that that would happen, I hate to say it,” he said. “I also hate the fact that Rio Arriba gets a bad rap for just addiction in general. It’s a horrible statistic that they have, but the entire community has people that suffer from addiction. It’s not just Rio Arriba, so that’s also a stigma that I want to change in my district.”