Driver in deadly accident convicted again
Original conviction for 2011 crash was overturned in 2015
SANTA FE — A Rio Arriba County man has been convicted a second time for causing the crash that killed an Algodones motorcyclist on the High Road to Taos over Memorial Day weekend in 2011 .
In a retrial this week in Tierra Amarilla that ended with verdicts Thursday, the jury convicted 62-year-old Juan de Dios Cordova of homicide by vehicle, two counts of great bodily harm by a vehicle and a count of leaving the scene of an accident.
His original convictions, which included a DWI count was overturned in June 2015 after the New Mexico Court of Appeals ruled that District Court Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer should not have allowed presentation of evidence that deputies obtained when they entered Cordova’s home not far from the accident scene without a warrant shortly after the fatal crash.
Motorcyclist Mark Wolfe, 51, was killed in the crash that also caused serious injury to his wife, Debbie Hill. Wolfe was the leader of the Duke City Drifters, an Albuquerque motorcycle group riding together near Chimayó when Cordova’s truck ran into them.
In 2012, Cordova was sentenced to 29 years in prison after his first trial.
When police entered his home following the crash, they found Cordova drunk and the keys to a truck that had been abandoned near the accident
scene and determined that Cordova was the owner. He claimed that truck had been stolen. Officers determined that the truck crossed over the center line into the group of motorcyclists that included Wolfe.
While prosecutors tried to argue that police had the right to enter the home because they had reason to be concerned about Cordova’s well-being, the Appeals Court stated when it threw out the original convictions that “deputies did not have reasonable grounds to believe that the Defendant might have been injured to an extent requiring their immediate entry and assistance.”