Thread: Underfunded and overworked state courts push hard to keep up

Justice delayed?: Underfunded and overtaxed, courts push hard to keep up
By Ashley Meeks ameeks@lcsun-news.com
Posted: 08/21/2010 09:35:34 PM MDT

LAS CRUCES - A third murder trial in less than 10 days could be resolved this week - but more than 15 other men accused of homicide in Do-a Ana County await their time in court.

Just this month, now-21-year-old Richard Arzola was acquitted by a jury in the stabbing death of U.S. Marine Jose Fernando "Fernie" Nu-ez, 21, after a fight in August 2008. In a separate case, 58-year-old Mary Rascon pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the stabbing death of 35-year-old Denise Holmes at the Gospel Rescue Mission shelter in 2008. And on Monday, Hector Flores Serna Jr., 27, is scheduled to face allegations he shot 49-year-old George Vargas in the head July 5, 2009, when the two allegedly got into a fight over a cocaine sale. Serna has been waiting in jail for more than a year, during which time the public defender's office requested three successful postponements.

About 60 percent of postponements - or "continuances" - are requested by defense counsel, while 40 percent come from the prosecution, according to Chief Judge Jerald A. Valentine, who was first appointed to the 3rd Judicial District in Las Cruces in 1993.

Speedier than it may appear

But despite an increase in population and a decrease in state funds in recent years, the district actually maintains one of the quickest criminal and civil trial rates in the state, Valentine said. And that's in spite of an Administrative Office of the Courts estimate that the district is in need of 3.5 additional judges in district court, he said.
"We're not hurting the most in the state," Valentine said.

Each year, the 3rd Judicial District prosecutes about 1,600 drunken driving cases, 750 juvenile cases, 1,200 to 1,300 felony crimes, 400 domestic violence cases, fewer than 100 civil forfeiture cases and a number of involuntary mental commitments.

The vast majority, according to District Attorney Susana Martinez, are first-time offenders. And while it can be an agonizingly long, little-understood process to get to trial, no homicide, rape or other serious cases have been thrown out for violating a defendant's right to a speedy trial before the county's two full-time and one half-time criminal judges, Martinez said.

"I think the system is working the best it can," Martinez said. "We're certainly in need of another full-time criminal judge in Do-a Ana County. We have stretched it to the maximum potential at this point."

Valentine concurred.

"A lot of the delay is caused because the Legislature has not adequately funded the public defender's office," Valentine said, calling it a "perennial problem."

But he also notes that justice is supposed to be slow and deliberative to be worthwhile.

"Due process is not intended to be an efficient procedure," he said. "it's intended to protect the rights of the defendant. When they're found guilty, the presumption is they're actually guilty. Their rights are protected so that you have a fair society."

The system, he added, has to "be careful of doing it faster - if doing it faster means you convict innocent people."


High degree of difficulty

Murder cases are massively complex, with huge amounts of ballistics, DNA and other crime scene evidence waiting in line to be processed at overbooked crime labs (which often won't process evidence without a trial date set, in case a plea bargain is reached) even before the crowded calendars of judges, attorneys, experts and witnesses can begin to be coordinated for a trial. Then, there is the issue of competency, when a defendant - like Kenneth Rauch, or Carlos Preciado - is judged incompetent to stand trial, unable to understand what they're charged with or what the consequences are, says Martinez. Months of treatment in the Las Vegas, N.M., behavioral health facility - where Justin Quintana was committed for life after killing his mother, New Mexico State Police Officer Susan Kuchma - can disappear when a defendant "decompensates," frustratingly beginning the process anew.

Without often-controversial plea bargains, which occur in about 90 percent of Do-a Ana County cases (and about 95 percent in other counties) it would be impossible for everything to get to trial, Martinez said.

"Frankly, there are many defendants who are willing to accept responsibility and plead to an offense if there's something in exchange," Martinez said.


Defense perspective

Everyone always blames the defense for the delays in murder trials, says Las Cruces defense attorney Joe Shattuck, a former prosecutor and public defender who has represented more than 100 people accused of murder. But the pace of those most serious trials depends on many other factors. Every case exists in an overwhelmed, under-funded, system - that's something judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys all agree on. The state's crime lab in Santa Fe needs more staff to process evidence. Both the district attorney's office and the public defender's office have full-time positions that remain frozen and unfilled due to budget constraints - three at the district attorney's office, seven at the public defender's.

A public defender will take on 700 or more cases a year, with 90 to 125 cases constantly in progress. And because it's politically unpopular for legislators to ask for more money to be spent on public defenders, that slows down the ability of prosecutors and judges to tackle cases, Shattuck said.

"Rarely are murder defendants able to make bond and so they want to get it over with, too," Shattuck said. "Even if it means going to prison - going to prison is sometimes looked on as better than sitting in jail, waiting on going to trial. Defendants want to get it over with as rapidly as everyone else does."

One factor influencing people's impatience with the court system is television, where a crime, trial and sometimes appeal can be wrapped up in an hour of "Law & Order" and mindblowing forensic investigations are commonplace on "CSI."

"On some of the television shows, for instance, the defendant will get in a fight with a police officer and get a cut on his forehead. During trial, he still has the bandage on his head," Shattuck said. "That's not the way it works, but that's the way people perceive it."

In real life, you can't rush investigation, he said, citing a murder case in Farmington in the late '90s: "I interviewed the state's key witness five times. Each interview was at least 50 pages and in each interview - in the first, they didn't know anything about (the incident). In the fifth, (because they had been granted immunity) they admitted they hired my client to do the murder," Shattuck said.

There are similar stories: the innumerable interviews in a Tucumcari murder before the defense found a woman who had been on a smoke break and seen the murderer's car - a brown vehicle, not the red car the accused owned. Or the case in Reserve where a state police investigator, seven days before trial, flipped over some leaves and pine needles and found a .22 casing from the victim's rifle, corroborating the defendant's self-defense argument.

Then, there's the public's tendency to see an arrest as proof enough that the accused is guilty, and because of the desire for the victim's family to have closure.

"Closure doesn't come if the wrong person's convicted," Shattuck said. "The viewpoint of most people is, 'Let's get this over with. He's obviously guilty.' Well, maybe they're not - maybe. Some are. Some aren't. And nobody should be satisfied if the wrong person goes to prison."

He added, "Everyone says, 'We want justice!' Well, a conviction is different than justice. Justice is not just somebody being convicted."


Ashley Meeks can be reached at (575) 541-5462.



Locked up
Some Do-a Ana County murder defendants are free on bond, but most remain in jail - some for months, others for years - awaiting their day in court:

Here are some of them:

• Carlos Preciado, 29, could go to trial next month in the hit-and-run death of 68-year-old pedestrian Alvin Moore during a high speed police chase following an alleged theft and assault July 25, 2005.

• Tony Garza, 31, could go to trial in October for allegedly fatally shooting 44-year-old Benjamin Baeza in the leg after an argument about a drug debt on April 30.

• Kenneth Carson Rauch, 51, could finally go to trial in October for the alleged random shooting death of Eusebio Escobedo, 27, who threw himself onto his son's mother when Rauch allegedly fired a shotgun at her April 25, 2005.

• Luis Daniel Alvarez Macias, 30, won't go to trial until November in the alleged stabbing and beating death of fellow homeless man Mark Cobb, 49, on Jan. 29, 2007.

• Moises Martin Menchaca, 26, won't go to trial until January (with co-defendant Isaac Mark Ramirez, 25, who is free on bond) in the shooting death of William Lucero, 36, after a fight at a party on Sept. 8, 2007. (Co-defendant Benjamin Joel Tapia, 29, awaits sentencing after pleading guilty.)

• Ricky Joe Juarez, 21, and Jesus Adam Herrera, 22, won't go to trial until January in the shooting death of 16-year-old Bobby Zertuche after an alleged argument Sept. 26, 2008.

• Jorge Murillo, 19, Javier Orozco, 16, and Irvin Ramirez, 17, won't go to trial until next May, at the earliest, for allegedly shooting 20-year-old Adam Espinoza, who was driving cross-country, during an alleged robbery Jan. 5.

• Larry Lujan, 32, remains in federal custody awaiting two trials on murder allegations - the stabbing deaths of Juana Olmedo, 45, and Alfredo Gonzales, 47, on Dec. 9, 1998, for which he was arrested in 2006, and the slaying of Dana Joseph Grauke, 16, whose body was found March 20, 2005, in a canal in Anthony, N.M. Lujan awaits federal prosecution in the Grauke case before the 10-day double murder trial - postponed after most recently being scheduled to start Aug. 16 - is able to proceed in 3rd Judicial District Court.

Source: Court records

http://www.lcsun-news.com/las_cruces-news/ci_15854885

The back-log of murder cases in district, circuit or superior courts of a border state like New Mexico will see such cases plummet if they use their county court systems to process and deport illegal aliens. I strongly urge all states to pursue using their state court systems and law enforcement officers to deport illegal aliens.