Judge rejects plea in shooting, stabbing incident

Ellington reschedules brothers’ hearing, orders DA to subpoena other parties

A Santa Fe judge refused to accept a plea deal Tuesday for two brothers accused of stabbing and shooting at two men in an Española trailer park in 2016.

Derek Vigil, 30, and Dylan Vigil, 23, are both charged with multiple felonies, including aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, conspiracy, shooting at or from a motor vehicle and tampering with evidence.

The older brother also is charged with heroin possession and receiving or retaining stolen property, a firearm.

According to court documents, the charges arose from an October 2016 altercation in which the brothers got into a fight with two men who came to their home seeking to purchase drugs.

Derek Vigil used an AK-47 rifle to shoot at the men’s truck, and Dylan Vigil ran to the vehicle and stabbed one of the men with a knife, according to police reports.

If convicted on all the charges, each of the brothers could face between 20 and 27 years in prison. The younger Vigil faces slightly less time because he is charged with 14 crimes; his brother faces 16 counts.

Assistant District Attorney Ramon Carrillo had agreed to deals for both men that called for them to plead guilty to less than half of the charges pending against them and receive prison sentences — 10 years in the case of one brother and 9½ years in the case of the other.

But under the terms of the deal, the majority of the prison sentences would have been suspended and the brothers — both of whom have been in jail since October 2016 — would have had to spend only 364 more days in jail before being released. Five years’ probation would have followed the jail term.

But District Judge T. Glenn Ellington rejected the deal Tuesday, saying “the court is not comfortable accepting this plea today. There are just too many loose ends, looking at the indictments and what has been represented to the court about what’s been going on in the case.”

According to statements made in court Tuesday, the men who came to the brothers’ home have been reluctant to be interviewed. The District Attorney’s Office has only interviewed one of them, Carrillo said.

Carrillo said one of the men was in jail when prosecutors attempted to interview him and was a “questionable witness.”

“Based on the facts,” Carrillo told the judge, “it was questionable whether we would get a conviction.”

Dorie Biagianti-Smith, the attorney representing Derek Vigil, said the brothers don’t sell drugs. She said they were provoked by the men who came to their home because they showed up at 11 p.m. and scared the brothers’ 16-year-old sister by attempting to force their way into the house when she answered the door.

Smith said she had considered arguing the brothers had acted in selfdefense before the plea agreement was made.

Ellington reset the brothers’ plea hearing for next month and ordered the District Attorney’s Office to subpoena the other two men to appear at the hearing.

This is the second time a district judge in Santa Fe has rejected a plea agreed to by state prosecutors this week. On Monday, Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer rejected a plea agreement that would have sentenced a man accused of shooting a woman in the hand to two years in prison, calling it too lenient.