Murder suspect died, but court did not know
Motion to stop appeal filed 10 months after exposure death of Mondrian-Powell
Robert Mondrian-Powell, the man accused of killing retired Santa Fe librarian Elvira Segura, was found dead in a parking lot last fall. His death, however, apparently was unknown to court officials, including prosecutors involved in a yearslong effort to put him on trial for Segura’s 2016 death.
The state Office of the Medical Investigator determined the 59-year-old suspect died of hypothermia from exposure to freezing temperatures after spending the night of Oct. 20 outdoors. He was found slouched in a chair near The Life Link, an organization headquartered off Cerrillos Road that helps homeless people.
The defendant’s quiet passing marked another unusual development in a murder case that prosecutors have been trying to have reinstated since a judge last summer tossed the charge on grounds that District Attorney Marco Serna’s office violated Mondrian-Powell’s right to a speedy trial.
On Tuesday, Gregory Dawkins, a public defender assigned to the case, filed a “suggestion of death” motion with the New Mexico Court of Appeals, seeking dismissal of the state’s appeal.
Dawkins’ motion said he became aware of Mondrian-Powell’s death
after a legal mailing from his office was returned marked “addressee deceased.”
The case began in October 2016, when police arrested Segura’s former boyfriend in Las Cruces after he had driven away from her Nambé home in her car. State police said Mondrian-Powell confessed to investigators he had slammed the 67-yearold woman’s head against a brick floor before shooting her. Police said he then left her body to decompose for weeks in a bathroom, even holding a yard sale before fleeing.
Authorities later said her body was so badly decomposed that the state Office of the Medical Investigator was unable to determine the cause of her death.
State District Judge T. Glenn Ellington in June 2018 dismissed charges, including second-degree murder, against Mondrian-Powell after a defense lawyer argued prosecutors had violated his client’s right to a timely trial.
Public Defender Jennifer Burrill also told the judge at the time that while Mondrian-Powell was in the Santa Fe County jail awaiting trial, he had lost 72 pounds and had been sexually assaulted.
Ellington found that while the state didn’t intentionally delay the case, two assistant district attorneys had not performed their due diligence.
Months later, the state Attorney General’s Office appealed the dismissal to the Court of Appeals and Serna’s office asked Ellington to set conditions of release for Mondrian-Powell. Assistant District Attorney Martin Maxwell said at a November hearing his office was confident the appeal would go in its favor but he feared Mondrian-Powell would flee while it was pending.
Ellington imposed basic conditions of supervision on Mondrian-Powell at that hearing — at which Mondrian-Powell was not required to appear — including a provision that barred him from leaving the state. But Mondrian-Powell was already dead at the time, his body having been discovered Oct. 20.
District Attorney Serna said Tuesday in an email, “I was surprised to learn that the Law Office of the Public Defender had not had any contact with Robert Mondrian-Powell since July or August of 2018, and am very concerned to hear that he may have been deceased for nearly a year. I was confident that our Court of Appeals would have resolved the pending issues in favor of the State by now, and that Mondrian-Powell would have already faced his day in the court.”
Dawkins could not be reached for comment late Tuesday. Burrill said she didn’t know when Mondrian-Powell had last spoken to Dawkins, but she said it is not unusual for a criminal defendant to be out of touch with his lawyer for several months while an appeal is pending.
An autopsy report said that Mondrian-Powell at the time of his death was about 5-feet, 9-inches tall, weighed about 119 pounds and had $1.17 on his person. The report said he had a heart condition that could have contributed to his death, which was ruled an accident.
A male acquaintance who arrived at the scene while police were investigating the death said Mondrian-Powell had been depressed “more than usual” the day before, according to a Santa Fe Police Department report. The man, who had last seen Mondrian-Powell in the same spot around 7:30 the previous night, said Mondrian-Powell had remarked that he was “sad after losing his partner a few months back.”
The man told an officer he was not aware of any living relatives of Mondrian-Powell.
Santa Fe County spokeswoman Carmelina Hart said in an email that the county on July 10 received a referral from the Office of the Medical Investigator about the unclaimed body of an indigent identified as Robert Boykin — another name Mondrian-Powell had been associated with — and had processed the paperwork required for his cremation at the county’s expense.
Ed Hatton, a funeral director at Direct Funeral Services in Albuquerque, confirmed the business was paid $600 by the county to pick up and cremate the body. Hatton said the funeral home keeps indigent remains for two years, but if they haven’t been claimed by then, the remains are scattered.
Burrill said Tuesday she would like for the Court of Appeals to decide the issues in the case but said she didn’t know whether the appeal would go forward.