FREED SUSPECT BACK IN JAIL
Judge found suspect was not a danger
Property crime suspect was ruled not to be a danger, but, police say, he robbed and threatened a woman Tuesday.
Earlier this month a 2nd Judicial District Court judge released a property crime suspect — with a long and sometimes violent record — finding he was not a danger to the community.
But police say he robbed a woman on Tuesday, putting a pistol in her mouth and beating her with it, before fleeing in a stolen car with her belongings.
The suspect, 32-year-old Donald Delahunt, is back behind bars on charges of robbery with a deadly weapon and receiving and transferring a stolen motor vehicle.
“It is frustrating when folks like this, with a lengthy criminal history, are let back onto our streets,” District Attorney spokesman Michael Patrick said. “All we can do is identify these people who we consider as dangerous to our community and seek to detain them. It’s up to the judge to decide if they perceive this person as a danger.”
District Court spokesman Sidney Hill said he could not comment on the specific case.
“A judge cannot continue to hold a defendant pending trial unless the DA proves by clear and convincing evidence that no release conditions will reasonably protect the safety of any other person or the community,” Hill said, speaking generally.
Court records show that state District Judge Alisa Hart denied pretrial detention for Delahunt on Feb. 11 after he was arrested on stolen vehicle and drug possession charges in Albuquerque.
During the hearing, prosecutors presented Delahunt’s history, including domestic violence, burglary and drug charges. In a 2013 case, Delahunt
beat a man until he thought he was dead and called a friend to ask for help burying the body.
The DA’s office also submitted five bench warrants and eight probation violations stemming from Delahunt’s noncompliance, resulting in him being unsatisfactorily discharged from probation three times.
Due to his history and noncompliance with court orders, Delahunt ranked a five out of six on the tool used by a judge to help decide whether to detain someone.
Hart found prosecutors had shown there was no way to ensure Delahunt’s compliance with court conditions, but did not prove his “dangerousness to the community,” according to court documents. She noted most of the offenses were non-violent and those that were violent were older.
As a result, Hart released Delahunt to pretrial services and he failed to report to the Judicial Supervision and Diversion Program.
Instead, he was back in jail on Wednesday in connection with the armed robbery.
According to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court, police received two calls of an armed robbery, one from a man that disconnected, and another from a woman saying she had been beaten and robbed by two men.
The woman told police her friend Jason Campbell and another man, later identified as Delahunt, showed up to her northeast Albuquerque apartment.
Police say Delahunt pulled out a gun and “placed it inside her mouth” before striking her with it “multiple times.”
The woman told police Delahunt demanded pills and cash from her while telling her to “take her clothes off.”
Police say that’s when Campbell called police himself and Delahunt began striking him with the gun and calling him a “snitch” for calling 911.
The woman told police she ran to a back bedroom and the two men left with her pills and cash.
According to the complaint officers “pinged” Campbell’s phone and found the men inside a stolen SUV in a parking lot a few miles away.