Governor’s crime agenda predictable, impractical
With Susana Martinez as governor, New Mexico endures its own version of Groundhog Day at this time of year.
Groundhog Day was a movie released 25 years ago. Its main character was a television weatherman somehow condemned to relive the same day in Punxsutawney, Pa., where crowds gather once a year to see a groundhog named Phil forecast how long winter will last.
It was a pretty good movie. Martinez’s adaptation is not nearly so interesting.
The Legislature goes into session Tuesday, and it will be a repeat performance for Martinez and the obedient lawmakers who annually reintroduce her boilerplate bills. Most of these measures center on crime and punishment.
Martinez again will try to reinstate the death penalty for certain murders, and she favors an expanded threestrikes law to lock away more felons.
But she knows that state prisons already are understaffed. She realizes that corrections officers are badly overworked.
New Mexico, a state barely recovered from being broke, cannot afford the series of crime bills Martinez is pushing. Her proposals would lead to more expenses for prisons, prosecutors, public defenders and the court system.
It is easy for Martinez to focus only on punishment. Her call for harsher sentences hits a nerve with many people who are fed up with crime.
But it is irresponsible for her to advance this agenda knowing full well that, if she got her way, the state’s courts and prisons could never handle the fallout.
In a state where one of America’s deadliest prison riots occurred, conditions in cell blocks ought to be foremost on the governor’s mind. That isn’t the case.
Formerly the district attorney of Doña Ana County, Republican Martinez knows all too well that many of her crime bills will not pass. She advocates them for political reasons.
Her video crews typically are on hand to capture lawmakers voting down her crime initiatives. Martinez’s camp can use this material in attack ads against Democratic legislators in swing districts.
Capital punishment is the centerpiece of her strategy.
Martinez is again behind the bill seeking death sentences for those who murder children, police officers or prison guards.
“New Mexicans have seen officers gunned down by thugs and children killed by monsters,” Martinez said. “It is time we say enough is enough. If you kill an officer or a child, you deserve the ultimate punishment.”
But is the life of a police officer more important than that of a 30-year-old mother of three who is raped and murdered? Is a sadistic parent who kills a child more deserving of the death penalty than a robber who murders a grandfather working at a convenience store?
New Mexico legislators and then-Gov. Bill Richardson outlawed capital punishment in 2009. Martinez took office in 2011, and for a few years she showed little interest in reviving it.
She did not put the weight of her office behind bills that then-Rep. Dennis Kintigh, R-Roswell, sponsored in 2011 and 2012 to reinstate the death penalty.
Then, as though realizing she had been lax in exploiting a political opportunity, Martinez made the death penalty a cause.
Yet, as a prosecutor, Martinez did not seek the death penalty in her most famous case — the 2003 rape and strangulation of a 22-yearold university student named Katie Sepich.
Martinez negotiated a plea deal with the murderer that gave him a life sentence.
Likewise, Martinez in 1998 did not ask for the death penalty against two men who kidnapped and murdered Carly Martinez, an 18-year-old student at New Mexico State University. Susana Martinez obtained convictions against the killers in separate trials, and they, too, are likely to remain in prison for the rest of their lives.
In debates at the Capitol, Gov. Martinez’s crime bills usually are killed by the same group of lawmakers.
Many of her proposals go to the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee, chaired by Democratic Rep. Eliseo Alcon of Milan. Reporters call Alcon’s committee The Cemetery. Martinez’s bills go there to die.
But there is still an occasional surprise during the hearings.
Last year, a casually dressed man named Juan Melendez arrived to testify in Alcon’s committee against Martinez’s bill to reinstate the death penalty. “Amigo, I know about this,” he said. That was an understatement. Melendez, now living in Albuquerque, spent more than 17 years on death row in Florida for a murder he did not commit. He says he never even met the victim.
Melendez argues against the death penalty at any opportunity. No government, he says, can release an innocent man from the grave.
His words are worth remembering as the same old bills are offered again and again by a governor who is still looking for a legacy.
Ringside Seat is an opinion column about people, politics and news. Contact Milan Simonich at msimonich@sfnewmexican.com or 505-986-3080.