Guilty verdicts upheld in fatal 2011 DWI crash
In retrial, Cordova convicted in incident near Chimayó that killed 1 person, injured 2
TIERRA AMARILLA — Juan de Dios Cordova, who has served five years of the 29-year sentence he received for killing a motorcyclist while driving drunk in 2011, was convicted again Thursday evening after standing trial a second time.
A lawyer for the 62-year-old Rio Arriba County resident, whose earlier convictions were overturned by the state Court of Appeals, tried to convince a jury of six men and six women this week that the state failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Cordova was the one driving his truck the day of the crash.
But after deliberating for more than three hours, the jury agreed with prosecutors that he is guilty of homicide by vehicle, causing great bodily harm by vehicle, aggravated DWI and leaving the
scene of an accident.
Marke Wolfe, 51, of Algodones died in the crash near Chimayó, in which his wife, Debbie Hill, and another motorcyclist were injured.
Thursday’s outcome culminated years of legal wrangling over how the Rio Arriba County Sheriff’s Office handled the case, as well as emotional struggles by Wolfe’s widow, who sat through both trials. She wept into a tissue as the latest verdicts were read.
“It’s a vindication for my husband, who can’t speak for himself,” Hill later told The New Mexican. “I have to be his voice and my voice. He deserves this verdict. This case has always been about Mark Wolfe, not about Juan Cordova.”
Rio Arriba County sheriff ’s deputies who came upon Cordova’s distinctive orange Dodge pickup abandoned near the scene of the fatal collision said they used paperwork discovered in the truck to trace Cordova back to his house, where they found him drunk in bed with his truck keys in his pocket.
But the Court of Appeals in 2015 overturned the original convictions, ruling that the trial judge should have tossed evidence gathered by the deputies on the grounds that they had entered Cordova’s home without a warrant.
State District Judge Jennifer Attrep, who presided over the second trial, has not yet scheduled a sentencing hearing for Cordova, who sat stone-faced during Thursday’s proceedings, dressed in a plaid flannel shirt and wearing his long, saltand-pepper hair in a braid. He declined to comment after the jury’s decision.
During his retrial, which began Monday, defense attorney Sheri Raphaelson argued that authorities don’t know for sure who was driving his pickup and suggested it easily could have been Timothy DeAguero, a man who witnesses reported seeing in the truck with Cordova that day.
DeAguero has since died, but jurors this week heard recordings of rambling testimony he gave during the first trial, in which he admitted to being a heroin addict who regularly drank alcohol and used drugs until he blacked out. The jury also heard testimony from a woman who said DeAguero, during a conversation that occurred after Cordova had already been convicted, admitted that he had been the one driving that day.
The woman, who said she had met DeAguero while selling him a mobile home, said DeAguero told her that Cordova had been passed out drunk that day. She said DeAguero told her that he and a woman who was with them when the truck crossed the center line on N.M. 76 and hit Wolfe’s motorcycle later pulled Cordova over to the driver’s side of the truck before fleeing.
Assistant District Attorney Peter Valencia told jurors during closing arguments Thursday that the defense’s version of events didn’t jibe with physical evidence found at the scene.
“They are blaming this whole thing on a ghost,” Valencia said, “and there is nothing to put him in the driver’s seat, nothing.”
Valencia pointed to the fact that no DNA evidence on the truck’s steering wheel or gear shift indicated DeAguero had been driving.
Physical evidence in the case — which was limited in the first trial thanks to investigative issues, including the inadvertent destruction of Cordova’s truck at a salvage yard — was even more sparse in the second trial. Evidence gathered during the warrantless entry of Cordova’s home, including his blood alcohol level, was not allowed in the second trial.