Suit targets local, state officials in teen’s death
Attorney says Jeremiah Valencia would be alive if not for ‘systematic failures’ by government agencies
An attorney representing the estate of a 13-year-old boy who was fatally tortured and then buried in a shallow, roadside grave near Nambé, says Jeremiah Valencia would still be alive if state, city and county officials had not failed him at every turn.
“This case presents a tragedy that resulted from a toxic blend of apathy, understaffing, negligent operation of a building and equipment, bad police training and supervision, investigation and follow-up, and systemic failures by the agencies whose purpose is to provide for public safety,” attorney Frances Carpenter wrote in a wrongful death complaint her office said was filed late Thursday in state District Court in Santa Fe.
The Santa Fe County Commission, the county sheriff ’s office, the city of Santa Fe and First Judicial District Attorney Marco Serna are named as defendants in a copy of the lawsuit obtained by The New Mexican.
The suit — which hadn’t been processed by the Court Clerk’s Office by close of business Thursday — seeks an unspecified amount of damages on behalf of Jeremiah’s younger sister, identified only as Jane Doe. It also names as defendants former Deputy District Attorney Michael Nuñez and Santa Fe police Officers Jacob Martinez and Hines DeLuca.
“Jeremiah Valencia was abused and tortured for months,” the suit says. “His injuries made it necessary for him to walk with a cane, he was beaten, drugged, starved and locked in a dog crate daily in the weeks leading up to his death.”
Investigators found Jeremiah’s body buried in a plastic tub along a Nambé road near his family’s home in January 2018. Deputies accused his mother, Tracy Ann Peña, and her boyfriend, Thomas Wayne Ferguson, of burying him in late November 2017 after Ferguson and his son Jordan Anthony Nuñez, then 19, had tortured and beaten the boy to death at the family’s home in Nambé while his mother was in jail.
Jordan Nuñez is not related to Michael Nuñez.
Prosecutors initially portrayed Jordan Nuñez, now 21, as a young man who had been coerced by his father into participating in Jeremiah’s torture.
Following Ferguson’s suicide in April 2018 at the Santa Fe County jail, however, prosecutors shifted their focus to Nuñez, claiming he might have dealt the fatal blow.
Peña has taken a plea deal in the case that calls for her to serve 12 years in prison and to testify for the state at Nuñez’s trial.
Carpenter argues in the lawsuit that officials could have saved the boy if they had acted differently at critical times before his death.
Ferguson, who had an extensive criminal history, was on probation at the time of Jeremiah’s death, according to the complaint and court records. He would have been incarcerated in late November 2017, the complaint says, but for a series of negligent acts by various officials and law enforcement officers. Many of the missteps cited in the suit are welldocumented in public records and have been reported as the case has proceeded through the courts.
Ferguson pleaded guilty to a 2014 kidnapping and battery case involving a former girlfriend and was serving probation after a judge suspended his nine-year sentence. He pleaded guilty again to domestic violence in a 2015 Rio Rancho case. But prosecutors from Serna’s office didn’t tell a District Court judge in Santa Fe about the new conviction during an April 2016 hearing on a probation violation, the suit says, and Ferguson was allowed to remain out of jail.
He later became involved with Peña. She had a history of drug addiction, according to the complaint, so Jeremiah and his sister lived with other family members from about 2011 to 2016.
Then the children returned to their mother’s custody. They had been enrolled in schools in Las Vegas, N.M., but she removed them in February 2017, around the same time Ferguson entered their lives, the suit says.
Ferguson and Peña moved with the children to Nambé the following summer, and he began to miss appointments with his probation officer, who hadn’t approved his move. He later provided the probation office with his Nambé address. Officers who tried to contact him there in June 2017 reported, however, that they had encountered large dogs in the yard and did not knock on the door. They never returned to the home.
The state Probation and Parole Division listed Ferguson as an absconder and issued an arrest order that should have been entered into a national crime database in July 2017. But it wasn’t.
A month later, when Ferguson failed to show up for a meeting with his probation officer, the complaint says, the division filed a probation violation report in state District Court, prompting a judge to order a bench warrant for his arrest Aug. 22, 2017, and directing the District Attorney’s Office to determine if a motion should be filed seeking revocation of Ferguson’s bond.
“But nothing happened for three months,” the complaint says. “… No investigation was done and no warrant was issued.”
In November 2017, the complaint says, another probation violation report was filed in Ferguson’s case, and a judge again ordered a warrant for his arrest.
According to the complaint, the warrant was not issued until January 2018 — three months after Jeremiah died.
Michael Nuñez, who now heads the First Judicial District’s Drug Court programs — said Thursday he had not seen the complaint and could not comment.
A spokesman for Serna’s office said in an email, “We have not been served with a lawsuit at this time and would not be able to comment on something we have no knowledge of.”
According to the complaint, Serna acknowledged at one point that his office should have filed a motion to revoke Ferguson’s probation, saying, “It fell through the cracks. That’s why we’re changing our system. That’s why we need to change our process in our office.”
Meanwhile, the complaint says, the owner of the Nambé property where the family had been living called law enforcement to report that she thought someone was living there without her permission. But the Santa Fe County Sheriff ’s Office did not take any action on her calls.
The sheriff ’s office spokesman did not return a message late Thursday seeking comment.
Days before Jeremiah’s death, Santa Fe police officers encountered Peña and Ferguson in a Walmart parking lot. They discovered there was a warrant out for Peña’s arrest, and they took her into custody.
But they didn’t realize Ferguson also was being sought and failed to follow protocol on ensuring any children in her custody would be in safe care during her incarceration.
In video footage of the incident, “Peña mentions her daughter several times to officers,” but they nonetheless wrote in their report that she was “not caring for any children” at the time of her arrest, the complaint says.
Because the officers did not make note of Peña’s daughter, which might have led to a background check on Ferguson that would have revealed his past convictions, Jeremiah and his sister were left in Ferguson’s care while Peña was incarcerated. She returned home to find him dead.
Santa Fe police Deputy Chief Ben Valdez did not respond to a message seeking comment.
Carpenter said in an email Thursday that the agencies in question have made changes to certain procedures — such as making sure warrants are entered into the National Crime Center Database.
“But these incremental changes are not enough, not nearly enough,” the attorney said, “to ensure that what happen to Jeremiah Valencia never happens again.”