Court rulings should ease claims of catch-and-release
When New Mexico voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment in 2016 that allowed judges to hold dangerous defendants in jail pending trial with no opportunity to post bond, it’s hard to imagine that Paul Salas wouldn’t have fit into that category.
Or Elexus Groves.
Or Mariah Ferry.
And thanks to recent state Supreme Court rulings, it’s now clear that defendants in cases like these can in fact be held pending trial, and judges at the District Court level can’t impose unreasonable requirements on prosecutors seeking to keep dangerous defendants off the streets.
In three separate rulings the court found:
The District Court judge can, in fact, consider the gruesome nature of the underlying crime when determining if someone should be released. That opinion by Justice Edward Chavez came in the case of Mariah Ferry, 19, who is charged with kidnapping and murder in the death last fall of John Soyka, whose mutilated body was found near the Rio Puerco. The District Court judge had ordered Ferry released under supervision. She remains free on strict conditions of release. A separate opinion by Justice Charles Daniels held that a District Court judge can consider “the totality of the defendant’s conduct” in deciding whether to detain or release a defendant under conditions. This was in the case of Elexus Groves, 21, who is charged with recklessly driving a stolen van and crashing into another car, killing a teenage girl, fatally injuring her mother and injuring her 3-year-old brother.
This occurred while police say Groves was on a heroin binge with her boyfriend, and Daniels noted that she was out of jail with conditions of release on charges in Sandoval County at the time of the fatal crash. He wrote that Groves’ overall conduct “fully justifies the District Court’s determination that she presented an unacceptable risk of continuing endangerment of the public.”
He added that in setting conditions of release, “we require that judges consider available information, exercise reason and make thoughtful judgments.”
Groves remains in the Metropolitan Detention Center.
In the case of Paul Salas, who was charged with 47 armed robberies in Albuquerque over the course of five months, the Supreme Court gave important clarity to the procedural aspect of the amendment. The District Court judge had refused a prosecution request to hold Salas without bond (he was in jail under $100,000 bond already) because the assistant district attorney hadn’t called officers to testify at the pretrial detention hearing. He remains at MDC.
Daniels said that wasn’t necessary. He wrote that prosecutors can present evidence without calling witnesses and that the normal rules of evidence used in trials don’t apply. He noted that state and federal courts around the country have ruled that full-blown trials are not to be used in detention hearings.
This is especially important as a practical matter in Albuquerque with its serious shortage of police officers.
The rulings appear to have put a damper on complaints that the new system implemented after the amendment was a “catch-and-release” program for dangerous defendants — which in turn spurred calls for new legislative action. Legislative intervention at this point would be premature. The Supreme Court is expected to provide additional guidance with possible rule changes, but at this point it appears judges at the district level now have the tools they need from a community safety standpoint.
The bail bond industry, of course, will never willingly accept the changes — because the amendment also makes it clear that non-dangerous defendants shouldn’t be held pending trial just because they are too poor to post even a minor bond. For them, this is a pocketbook issue.
But everyone else — lawmakers, police and concerned citizens — should take a step back and see how the system works over the next year in light of these important decisions.