Ex-lawyer appears in court on DWI charge
Carlos Fierro, a former Santa Fe attorney who spent more than three years in prison after killing a pedestrian while driving drunk in a high-profile case in 2008, appeared in state District Court for arraignment on his appeal of another DWI charge last year.
Fierro pleaded guilty to the latest DWI charge but reserved his right to appeal the conviction. He was picked up in Española on Memorial Day weekend after allegedly tossing a cigarette butt out of his car and making an irregular lane change.
Fierro says that the officer had no valid reason to pull him over but targeted him because of his past. Fierro’s passenger in the fatal accident in 2008 was a state police officer assigned to then-Gov. Bill Richardson’s security detail.
Fierro had been scheduled to appear Feb. 13 for arraignment, but didn’t show up based on the assumption that his attorney Gene Chavez had waived arraignment on the appeal. But District Judge T. Glenn Ellington said Chavez had only emailed his office that morning and had not formally motioned the court to vacate the hearing.
Fierro narrowly avoided having a bench warrant issued for his appearance by contacting another attorney to appear on his behalf that afternoon to explain to Ellington what had happened.
The judge admonished Chavez at Monday’s hearing, saying, “You cannot cancel a court appearance without confirming that’s what’s going to happen.” That prompted an apology from Chavez, who had been chastised by a magistrate earlier in the same case for a similar issue.