Safe to release?
Dysfunctional system may have claimed another victim
District Judge Christina Argyres got it exactly right last week when she ordered Charles Taylor held in jail pending trial on charges of kicking in a woman’s door in broad daylight before beating her, tying her up and raping her at a southeast Albuquerque apartment complex.
The horrific incident began, allegedly, with Taylor asking the woman to borrow a lighter.
“The issue is what are we going to do to protect the community from people like Mr. Taylor?” Judge Argyres asked during a hearing in which prosecutors were seeking to have Taylor kept behind bars.
“Are there any conditions that will afford anybody any sense of security? And my answer is absolutely not,” Argyres said. “There’s only one place for you, Mr. Taylor, while this case is pending, and that is in the Metropolitan Detention Center.”
Unfortunately, it’s one case, one brutalized victim and one judge too late.
Taylor is the new poster boy in the debate over pre-trial detention, which is aimed at protecting the community from dangerous defendants under terms of a constitutional amendment approved overwhelmingly by New Mexico voters in 2016. But there are other cases that pose similar questions, including Evonne Jaramillo, who was charged with murder and conspiracy this month in the death of her boyfriend’s aunt. The DA’s office had asked that she be detained after she failed to appear for hearings; the same judge who handled Taylor’s case released her. She is now in custody after again failing to appear.
Voters were especially motivated to approve the amendment by the argument judges lacked the tools to keep defendants like Taylor and Jaramillo behind bars while awaiting trial under the state’s constitution that guaranteed “makeable” bail in almost all cases. Critics have blamed the amendment for preventing judges from keeping dangerous suspects behind bars. But recent Supreme Court decisions have made it clear that judges have the tools they need and cannot place impossible barriers in front of prosecutors.
And while, yes, the tools are there, the case of Charles Taylor and his latest alleged victim show there is plenty of work to do to make sure they are used properly.
It was just April 10 when Taylor had been in front of District Judge Charles Brown on charges of receiving and transferring a stolen vehicle. Prosecutors in that case also asked that he be held pre-trial.
Brown denied the request after a pre-trial services assessment — based in part on a seriously flawed tool that takes into account only pending charges and convictions, but not other arrests. Taylor had been accused of threatening a homeowner with a knife before stealing his vehicle in January, but the charges filed by APD had been voluntarily dismissed by prosecutors and not yet re-filed. Under those circumstances, the court’s risk assessment tool treats the January incident as never having happened.
Even so, the pre-trial services report that accompanied the assessment tool should have spelled it out for the judge. And it is a judge’s job to consider all the relevant facts before making these decisions. (We don’t know exactly what was in the pre-trial services report because that is not a public record.)
The prosecutor from the office of District Attorney Raúl Torrez won’t win any advocacy awards for his performance at that hearing, either — instead of citing the knife incident specifically, he simply asked Brown to take formal notice of prior incidents.
Brown ordered Taylor released, but ordered “maximum supervision,” which as a practical matter in the case meant … nothing. Taylor had been arrested twice already this year for violating provisions of release from pre-trial services, so it’s pretty clear complying is not high on his to-do list.
Incredibly, with all this background, pre-trial services didn’t even put the ankle bracelet on Taylor that Brown authorized (but didn’t order).
Taylor was arrested nine days later for the alleged rape on a fingerprint match.
Torrez says there has been considerable “pushback” from judges on requests for pre-trial detention and he will use new funding to assign an employee to go through files to make sure his lawyers can cite key allegations — even though he says the court should already have that information.
That’s the right thing to do — because the community is tired of excuses and finger pointing over unacceptable outcomes. They are tired of violent people being released only to quickly commit new crimes. The DA’s decision should ensure that a judge is presented all of the pertinent facts when making the tough decision on whether to detain a person prior to trial. No more excuses, no more finger pointing.
And if a judge then decides to release a suspect a DA has made clear has been accused of a violent crime — well, we have elections, including DA and judicial retention, for a reason.