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District Attorney Torrez uses several cases against one defendant to illustrate his point

The district attorney said he is frustrated with deadlines in Bernalillo County criminal courts that prosecutors say are almost impossible to meet.

He said several cases against Nicholas Tanner illustrate his point.

In a span of about six weeks in 2015, four criminal cases against Tanner, 35, were dismissed because prosecutors didn’t meet discovery deadlines to share evidence.

District Attorney Raúl Torrez is trying to make changes to a case management order that sets deadlines for cases in the county’s criminal courts. His proposal includes giving judges more discretion about what to do when prosecutors fail to meet certain deadlines.

On Monday, the District Attorney’s Office released a report that outlines several problems that arose since those deadlines went into effect in February 2015.

The report specifically mentions Tanner, who had four cases against him dismissed in a matter of weeks.

The first two cases involved shoplifting. Tanner’s attorney filed motions to dismiss in both, arguing that prosecutors hadn’t turned over lapel camera footage, computer-aided dispatch reports, 911 calls, surveillance video and other evidence.

The first case was tossed out on Feb. 2, 2015, and the next was thrown out a week later.

The next month, Tanner was back in court for a scheduling conference in another shoplifting case, and his attorney again argued that not all the evidence had been turned over. A judge dismissed that case, too, according to court documents.

Two days later, another case against Tanner, this time for suspicion of unlawful taking of a motor vehicle and battery on a household member, was dismissed because prosecutors didn’t meet discovery deadlines, according to court documents.

There are additional felony cases against him that are pending.

“While there may have been technical violations of the CMO in all four instances, all four cases were dismissed early in the life of the case, without allowing the state the opportunity to remedy the minor violations and keep the cases on a trial track,” the District Attorney’s Office report states. “Indeed, in a particularly perverse irony, repeat and multiple offenders often reap the greatest windfalls by district court decisions.”