Dismissal stands; DA missteps detailed
Members of the district attorney’s staff were so inept in prosecuting the accused murderer of a former Santa Fe librarian that they filed their witness list 63 days late and long failed to produce a medical examiner they had billed as an expert witness, a judge said this week in rejecting District Attorney Marco Serna’s motion to revive the case.
In a scathing rebuke of a prosecution he said did nearly everything wrong, state District Judge T. Glenn Ellington let stand his oral ruling that the case against Robert Mondrian-Powell cannot be refiled because the state violated the defendant’s right to a speedy trial.
Police arrested the 59-year-old in October 2016 in Las Cruces, a month after investigators discovered the
remains of Elvira Segura in the Nambé house she and Mondrian-Powell had shared. Police said Mondrian-Powell confessed to shooting Segura, 67, but her body was so badly decomposed when it was discovered in the home’s bathroom that the state Office of the Medical Investigator could not identify the cause of death.
Citing the prosecution’s mishandling of the case, Ellington in June dismissed the murder case against Mondrian-Powell, who remains free.
Serna told The New Mexican he plans to appeal the judge’s decision and hopes Ellington will put Mondrian-Powell back behind bars.
On Wednesday evening, Serna filed a motion to set new conditions for Mondrian-Powell’s release, pending the appeal of the case.
The motion mentions the state also has filed an appeal to Ellington’s ruling, but that document had not been added to the online court filing as of Wednesday evening.
Court documents show Assistant District Attorney Natalie Perry initiated prosecution efforts against Mondrian-Powell in October 2016 and stayed with the case until the early summer of 2017.
Twenty-five hearings were held across 20 months while eight members of the District Attorney’s Office took turns prosecuting the case before Ellington decided that a series of delays by prosecutors had denied Mondrian-Powell’s constitutional rights.
In a written decision released Tuesday, Ellington wrote that Mondrian-Powell “has been prejudiced due to the oppressive pretrial incarceration of over 20 months … the state’s motion for reconsideration is denied.”
Among other slip-ups detailed in the 15-page finding, Ellington said:
A firearm examiner’s report of a gun Mondrian-Powell allegedly used to shoot Segura contained defects but was not turned over to the defense until eight months after it was completed.
The state failed to respond to pending defense motions in a timely manner.
The state repeatedly failed to produce its expert witness, Laurie Edelman of the Office of the Medical Investigator. When she finally did testify, in May 2018, she said she did not identify Segura’s body and that the manner and cause of her death was “indeterminate.”
“The Court finds that none of the negligent or administrative delays were done to intentionally frustrate the Defense, although that was the end result,” Ellington wrote. “None of these delays were the fault of Mr. Mondrian-Powell. The combination of these factors weighs heavily against the State.”
Ellington’s decision says the District Attorney’s Office did not ask the court to set any conditions for Mondrian-Powell’s release. Serna told The New Mexican on Wednesday he disagrees with that interpretation and said his office “always intended” to set conditions once Ellington filed his final order.
“I can now file my notice of appeal and motion to review conditions of release,” he said.
Public Defender Jennifer Burrill, who represented MondrianPowell in the case, praised Ellington’s decision.
“There was not just one reason for the dismissal, but rather a series of problems ranging from the State’s failure to produce discovery to misleading the court, ultimately resulting in the dismissal,” she said. “The court’s detailed explanation of the series of errors will make the chance of winning an appeal less likely.”
The state originally charged Mondrian-Powell with firstdegree murder but reduced the charge to second-degree murder when the case was transferred to District Court in December 2016. Delays in the case began almost from the onset.
Staff reporter Phaedra Haywood contributed to this report.