Charges tossed against protesters

Municipal judge says police complaints were too vague

A Santa Fe municipal judge this week dismissed charges in the four remaining cases against demonstrators arrested during a September protest of the Entrada, an annual re-enactment of Spanish conquistador Don Diego de Vargas retaking the city following the 1680 Pueblo Revolt.

Judge Pro Tem Ann Yalman tossed the charges against Sierra Logan and Jennifer Haley on Monday and against Carmen Stone and Nicole Ullerich on Tuesday. The judge cited the same reason for the dismissals as she did for the three other defendants charged in Municipal Court: the criminal complaints filed by Santa Fe police were too vague.

The complaints failed to “set forth sufficient facts necessary to give [the defendants] notice of the criminal violation charged,” according to the judge’s orders.

The charges were dismissed without prejudice, which means they can be refiled. Assistant City Attorney Alfred Walker said Wednesday that refiling the charges is “still a possibility.”

“That decision has not been made definitively,” he said.

A decision will be made “fairly quickly,” Walker added.

Attorneys for two of the three other protesters have said Yalman was skeptical of the city’s decisions when she dismissed the charges against their clients earlier this month and that she advised Walker to “think long and hard” before refiling.

Felony charges filed against Jennifer Marley, a San Ildefonso Pueblo woman who helped organize the protest, are in limbo. In October, prosecutors dismissed the charges in Santa Fe County Magistrate Court against Marley, who is accused of striking two police officers with a cardboard sign during a confrontation on a downtown street on the opening day of the annual Fiesta de Santa Fe. But the district attorney has

not yet decided whether to take that case to a higher court.

Calls to abolish the Entrada have gotten louder in recent years, especially as cities across the nation re-examine their monuments honoring controversial historical figures, as well as celebrations of moments in history marked with bloodshed.

The Caballeros de Vargas, a religious fraternity, stages the Entrada each year to commemorate a moment of peace between the Spanish conquistadors and Pueblo Indians, but critics say it paints a rosy and inaccurate picture of the 1692 reconquest.