Lawyers seek to bar evidence, testimony from looming trial
In triple homicide case, both sides attempt to keep out past allegations of violence by suspect, witnesses
As the First District Attorney’s Office prepares to bring a young Pojoaque man to trial on three counts of first-degree murder in the 2011 slaying of an El Rancho family, both the prosecution and defense are attempting to limit what jurors will hear.
Nicholas Ortiz’s attorney, Dan Marlowe, is asking a judge to exclude evidence related to previous accusations against his client, including allegations that Ortiz, who was just 16 when the family members were slain in their home with a mattock-style pickax, had twice stolen from the family, that he was found hiding in the bushes of the family’s home before the killings and that he had been cruel to animals.
Prosecutors are asking that evidence tied to a star witness — such as allegations of violence — be kept out of the trial, as well as allegations that one of the slain family members had sexually abused children and that a surviving family member had dealt drugs and owed money to the mafia.
A district judge is scheduled to hear the motions Wednesday. A trial is set to begin May 17 in the case, which centers on a grisly triple homicide that horrified the tiny rural community about 20 miles north of Santa Fe — and haunted it for years as police seemed to make no headway in solving the case. As residents waited for police to announce an arrest or name a suspect, some worried a serial killer was on the loose in their village.
It wasn’t until February 2015 — three years and eight months after Lloyd Ortiz, 55, his wife, Dixie Ortiz 53, and their adopted special-needs son, Steven Ortiz, 21, were found slaughtered in their home — that police arrested Nicholas Ortiz.
According to testimony presented during a preliminary hearing in August, prosecutors believe Nicholas Ortiz, along with Jose Roybal, then 15, and Roybal’s cousin Ashley Roybal, then 24, hatched a plot to kill the Ortizes and then steal money and marijuana plants from their home.
Nicholas Ortiz is not related to the family, though he was friends with another juvenile family member and had been a frequent overnight guest.
The Roybal cousins said during testimony that the three young people were sitting around one evening discussing how to get money to get high, when Nicholas Ortiz suggested robbing the Ortiz family because he knew they had money and marijuana.
But Ashley Roybal suggested something more sinister, according to Jose Roybal, who told police his cousin
had suggested the boys “just go to the house and kill them and take everything in the house.”
She supplied them with her grandfather’s mattock-style pickax as a weapon, according to testimony at the hearing.
Jose Roybal said the three agreed on the plan, and Ashley Roybal dropped the two boys off outside the Ortizes’ home. But Jose Roybal said he changed his mind as he and Nicholas Ortiz stood outside, with owls hooting and dogs barking around them. He said he refused to participate in the planned murder and instead told Nicholas Ortiz that he would wait for Ortiz to commit the killings, and then he would help remove the valuables.
Then, Jose Roybal testified, Nicholas Ortiz entered the home — where Lloyd and Dixie Ortiz’s grandson, a friend of Nicholas’, had provided him with food and shelter on occasion — and murdered the couple, along with their son Steven, with the rusty, wood-handled pickax.
Afterward, Nicholas Ortiz fled, Ashley Roybal testified, and she picked him up and took him to the nearby home where she and Jose Roybal lived with their grandparents. She said she allowed him to shower there.
Ashley Roybal has been charged with conspiracy to commit aggravated burglary with a deadly weapon and tampering with evidence in the case, and she agreed to take a plea deal to settle those charges and unrelated burglary charges. The deal exposes her to a possible 14 years in prison. She has not yet been sentenced but remains incarcerated at the Santa Fe County jail. Since being booked on those charges in March 2015, Roybal has given birth to a baby girl, who is now less than a year old and living with family.
Jose Roybal, arguably the state’s top witness in the case, has never been charged with any crime in relation to the slayings.
According to court documents, a tipster told police within several days of the homicides that Nicholas Ortiz might be the killer. But he wasn’t arrested then. Nor was he arrested in 2012, when Ashley Roybal, in police custody on the burglary charges, gave officers her account of the deaths in El Rancho. Nor was he arrested in 2013, when a young woman told investigators that Jose Roybal, then her boyfriend, had told her the night of the murders that he and Ortiz had planned to rob the family’s home.
Even after Jose Roybal gave officers more details about the incident in 2014, Ortiz remained free in the community for another six months.
Following his arrest last year, Ortiz spent about four months in jail before he was allowed to post a $100,000 bond. He was released on electronic monitoring in June, and he has been living in Albuquerque since then, awaiting his trial.
Wednesday’s hearing in the case centers on several motions filed by both sides, seeking to exclude evidence in the case.
Prosecutors have motioned the court to exclude testimony that paints Jose Roybal in a bad light, particularly claims that he has been violent in the past, including allegations that he once beat his own father with a bat.
Prosecutors argue that evidence presented to give the jury insight into a witness’s character can only be used to determine the extent to which the witness is truthful — and that those details about Jose Roybal don’t qualify as such evidence.
Defense attorney Marlowe disagrees, saying in a recent motion that Roybal’s denials that he is a violent person — “when there is ample evidence that he is violent” — speak directly to his lack of credibility.
The District Attorney’s Office also wants to exclude statements made during interviews and testimony from the preliminary trial suggesting that one of the victims in the case, Steven Ortiz, was an alleged pedophile and speculation that he may have been murdered by a parent of a child he had once molested. The state argues that there is no evidence beyond hearsay that Steven Ortiz was a pedophile, so the testimony is irrelevant. Prosecutors make the same argument for barring testimony about the alleged drug dealing and mafia debts of Cherie Ortiz-Rios, the adult daughter of the slain couple.
Marlowe said in a motion that he doesn’t intend to present evidence regarding Steven Ortiz’s alleged pedophilia, but he believes allegations regarding Ortiz-Rios are relevant to his client’s defense because they suggest she may have had a motive to kill her parents.
Meanwhile, Marlowe has asked the court to exclude testimony by Ashley Roybal alleging that Nicholas Ortiz had stolen from the family in the past, saying in his motion that the testimony would cause “extreme prejudice to the Defendant if allowed.”
Marlowe also seeks to ban testimony about an incident that occurred several weeks before the murders, in which Ortiz reportedly was discovered hiding in the bushes outside the family’s home, and Ashley Roybal’s testimony that he had been cruel to animals. Such evidence, he said, is “not relevant to any issues before the jury and is extremely prejudicial.”