Ex-inmate in home invasion got $135K to settle suit
A former state inmate who filed a lawsuit against then-Gov. Bill Richardson and the state Department of Corrections in 2007, claiming he had faced retaliation for advocating for his rights and the rights of other prisoners while serving 23 years for murder, was paid $135,000 earlier this year to drop his case, say records released Tuesday.
According to the Doña Ana County Sheriff ’s Office, the money wasn’t enough, for whatever reason, to keep Samuel Chavez, 58, from committing an armed robbery in October.
He is accused of invading the home of a Las Cruces family and demanding money.
Chavez, a Las Cruces resident who served as a prisoner representative during the implementation of the Duran Consent Decree following the 1980 riot at the state penitentiary south of Santa Fe, was released from prison in 2012. He had served time for fatally shooting a friend in 1988, and said in his complaint that he spent much of that time in solitary confinement as punishment from prison officials.
Chavez gained notoriety for claiming in the lawsuit that prison officials had poisoned inmates’ food and water and sold their organs and blood on the black market.
After his release, he won a two-year court battle for permission to dig in and around the now shuttered Old Main prison to search for ledgers and sealed jars of tainted food he said he had hidden so he could later prove his claim. But the search came up empty.
Most the claims in the lawsuit, which Chavez pursued primarily on his own behalf, were centered on his living conditions in the prison, which he equated to torture.
Because of his efforts to advocate for himself and others, he said in the complaint, prison officials retaliated against him “by subjecting him to cruel and usual living conditions and punishment i.e. total mind-numbing sensory deprivation, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week … except for brief and meaningless escorts to the humiliating bare outdoor quasi dog cages, where he would pace back and forth, and quickly breathe fresh air.”
Chavez said he was “denied all his legal and personal property, bedding, linens, changes of clothing, toilet paper, toothbrush, toothpaste and other necessary items of personal hygiene and items for basic functions of living, causing him to suffer insomnia, sleep deprivation, mental anguish, emotional distress, anxiety, and stress and physical pain and discomfort, all tantamount to physical and psychological torture.”
The state fought Chavez in court for more than a decade, filing dozens of motions over a 10-year period before agreeing to pay him $135,000 in January, according to documents released Tuesday.
Chavez, who is being held without bond in the Doña Ana County jail on charges tied to the recent home invasion, could not be reached for comment.
Wyndham Kemsley, a spokesman for the state General Services Department, did not respond to a reporter’s questions Tuesday about who made the decision to settle with Chavez instead of going to trial after 10 years of litigation — and why — and how much the case cost taxpayers in legal fees.