State was warned about Gregor
Judge to consider redactions in letters sent to AG years before sex assault charges filed as questions raised about fair trial
A New Mexico law firm advised the state Attorney General’s Office in a 2011 letter that former elementary school teacher Gary Gregor was a predator who should be prosecuted to protect the community, Gregor’s attorney said in court Thursday.
But it wasn’t until six years later that the Attorney General’s Office filed criminal charges against Gregor, who now faces multiple counts of criminal sexual contact involving former students in Santa Fe and Española schools. The letter is one of numerous records
The New Mexican requested last month
in an effort to learn why criminal charges against Gregor weren’t filed until 2017, eight years after the parents of one of his accusers had reported him to Española police in 2009.
The Attorney General’s Office has deemed the letter, and three others that the Rothstein, Donatelli, Hughes, Dahlstrom, Schoenburg & Bienvenu law firm sent to the agency between 2011 and 2013, are public records releasable under the state Inspection of Public Records Act.
But Gregor’s public defender, Shelby Bradley, asked a state district judge to order the attorney general to delay releasing the letter and other documents requested by — including parts of transcripts of a public hearing held by the Public Education Department — saying it would bias potential jurors and keep Gregor from getting a fair trial.
Judge Sarah Singleton told Bradley to indicate the specific redactions he wants the attorney general to make to the records, based not on exceptions to the state Inspection of Public Records Act, but on which documents he feels would violate Gregor’s right to a fair trial.
“I looked at case law and I couldn’t find any in New Mexico but in other jurisdictions, which seems to recognize that a right to a fair trial trumps any rights that the media or anybody else might have under an IPRA type of statute,” Singleton said during a hearing on the issue Thursday. “So I’m not sure you need to prove the documents shouldn’t be disclosed under IPRA if you can prove a fair trial outweighs the rights of the public to have access through the media to these documents.”
Singleton said that if the Attorney General’s Office does not agree with Bradley on what should be withheld, she will rule on disputed redactions on a case-by-case basis.
Daniel Yohalem, an attorney who sits on the board of the Foundation for Open Government, said Thursday he had never in his 27 years as an attorney specializing in Inspection of Public Records Act requests and open government cases seen a judge order a public entity to withhold public records on the grounds that it would violate a defendant’s right to a fair trial.
Yohalem said state statute does give the judge the authority to order records withheld under an exemption in the statute that says “as otherwise provided by law.”
He later added, “The idea that the defendants can block the release [of the documents] to the public without any showing that there is any harm to their client or without the judge considering less onerous remedies, that seems to me to not be right.”
Yohalem said the Public Defender’s Office bore a “heavy, heavy burden” to prove the potential harm to Gregor justified delaying the production of public records.
But Bradley did not offer any evidence to support his argument Thursday.
Still, the judge said, after reviewing some of the documents at issue, she was “convinced that some of the material sought ought not be disclosed because … the impact it is bound to have on the jury panel.”
The public defender’s emergency motion to delay production of the records to the newspaper comes just weeks before one of three criminal cases pending against Gregor is set to go to trial Dec. 3.
and other news outlets already have published numerous stories detailing the allegations against Gregor and reporting the more than $9 million in settlements Española Public Schools has agreed to pay accusers.
One of Gregor’s accusers appeared last year on the network television program Dateline as part of a segment titled “Passing the Trash,” about schools that unload problematic teachers by hiding alleged misconduct. It wasn’t until three weeks after the television show aired that the Attorney General’s Office took action against Gregor.
Gregor operated under the radar for decades, according to lawsuits filed by attorney Carolyn M. “Cammie” Nichols on behalf of his accusers.
Nichols says in the lawsuits that Gregor was accused of inappropriate contact with students in Utah and Montana before he came to New Mexico and that school officials here failed to hold him accountable after receiving reports from museum docents that Gregor behaved inappropriately with his students while on a field trip to a local museum in 2004.
Following that report, Santa Fe school officials fired Gregor but did not report him to police. After Gregor said he would not seek a formal hearing regarding his dismissal, Santa Fe school officials also agreed to provide a neutral recommendation to his next employer, leaving a pathway for Gregor to be hired elsewhere.
Assistant Attorney General Clara Moran said during Thursday’s hearing on the records request that the agency felt “stuck” between its duty to comply with the Inspection of Public Records Act and assuring Gregor receives a fair trial.
“We are looking at this with an eye towards transparency, towards disclosure,” Moran said.
But, she added, “We would object to anything that would prohibit [Gregor] from receiving a fair trial.”