Stephen D Aarons, Attorney at Law | Aarons Law PC | New Mexico Criminal Defense Attorney

Category: Sexual Offenses

  • Probation for father, son in rape case

    A father and son accused of jointly raping a 15-year-old girl at a Fiesta de Santa Fe party in 2015 pleaded no contest Monday to conspiring to sexually assault the girl and threatening to harm her if she went to police.

    The plea was part of an agreement with the District Attorney’s Office that calls for both men to be placed on probation.

    Prosecutors dismissed eight counts of criminal sexual penetration and two counts of criminal sexual contact against 44-year-old Charles Galvan and six counts of criminal sexual penetration against his 23-year-old son, Carlito Quintana Speas.

    District Judge T. Glenn Ellington sentenced Galvan to three years probation after accepting his plea. He sentenced Quintana Speas, who has been serving time on a federal bank robbery conviction while this case was pending, to five years probation.

    The charges to which the men entered pleas exposed each to as many as six years in prison, but their suspended sentences in favor of probation were part of the deal agreed to by prosecutors.

    The state also agreed not to apply a one-year habitual offender enhancement against Galvan, who was convicted in the past of heroin trafficking, child abuse and aggravated fleeing of a police officer.

    The two men were charged with raping the girl, who does not live in New Mexico, after she told school officials that during a visit to Santa Fe in September 2015 she had encountered Quintana at a party where she took part in using drugs and drinking, then went with him to the home of one of his relatives, where Quintana Speas shared a room with his father.

    The girl said she and Quintana Speas got in bed and were joined by Galvan, after which the two men sexually assaulted her.

    The girl told the men on several occasions to stop, according to an arrest affidavit. Police say the men later threatened to kill her if she told anyone about the incident. The teenager told family members about the incident during the ensuing days and months but it wasn’t until March 2016, after she told authorities at her school about the incident, that the matter was reported to Santa Fe police.

    Ellington said when sentencing the men Monday that the state was “getting as much as it can” in the case, which he said had been “a mess since the beginning,” with many discovery issues and the state having difficulty even arranging for the defendants to be brought to court hearings.

    Asked by the judge why the deal was a good one for the state, Assistant District Attorney Martin Maxwell said the accuser has a high risk pregnancy and was concerned about having to testify at trial.

    Maxwell said the state was also concerned about the age of the case. It had been pending for more than three years and Quintana Speas had filed a motion to dismiss for lack of a speedy trial.

    Asked to comment following the hearing, District Attorney Marco Serna said in an email: “We must always remember that victims of sexual assault and violence endure unimaginable pain and anguish and… may not want to participate in the prosecution process.

    Although we have had constant communication with the victim’s family, we have recently lost contact with the victim who showed indications of hesitation in November of last year. Rather than gamble on the small chance we’d be able to find the victim to testify, we ensured that these two individuals are convicted felons.”

    When the men were asked if they wanted to say anything in court Monday, Quintana Speas declined, but Galvan spoke.

    “I’m already almost 45 and I’ve never been convicted of no violent crime,” Galvan said, adding he was not a danger to the community and that, if he was, he already would have been convicted of a violent crime by now.

    “This is an unlucky and unfortunate situation… let’s leave it at that,” Galvan said.

    Ellington responded that Galvan was “hardly a model citizen.”

    “I’ve had to revoke your conditions of release on a couple of occasions,” Ellington said, adding that Galvan had been charged with “many violent things” in the past but was simply lucky he’d never been convicted of them.

    The judge said the state was in “an untenable position” trying to prosecute this case with its many evidence problems including intimidation of the witness which, the judge said, he couldn’t be sure hadn’t continued while the case was pending.

  • Activist accused of drugging, raping two women in Seattle

    Originally published August 10, 2018 at 6:38 pm Updated August 10, 2018 at 10:03 pm

    By Lewis Kamb lkamb@seattletimes.com @lewiskamb
    Seattle Times staff reporter

    Redwolf Pope, 41, was charged Friday in King County Superior Court with two counts of second-degree rape of a yet-to-be-identified woman and a 33-year-old woman in 2016 and 2017.

    A purported Native-American activist and entrepreneur arrested in Arizona last month for allegedly drugging and raping a Washington woman in New Mexico in 2017 now faces more rape charges in King County, where authorities contend he raped at least two more women in his Seattle apartment.

    Redwolf Pope, 41, was charged Friday in King County Superior Court with two counts of second-degree rape of a yet-to-be-identified woman and a 33-year-old woman in 2016 and 2017.

    Videotapes recovered in June from Pope’s computer at an apartment where he sometimes resided in Santa Fe, New Mexico, allegedly show him separately raping several women who appear to be unconscious.

    One of those women later was identified as a Washington resident, 34, who told police in June she suspected Pope drugged and raped her during her visit to New Mexico in the summer of 2017. Pope was arrested in Arizona on a warrant in late July on suspicion of that alleged rape and related charges.

    This week, Seattle police alleged in a probable-cause affidavit that Pope also videotaped himself raping the two other women in his Capitol Hill apartment. Police linked images from time-stamped videos and photographs with pictures confiscated during a June 14 search of his Seattle apartment to help establish when and where the alleged rapes occurred, according to the affidavit.

    Pope’s bond has been set at $500,000 in King County, where arraignment has been set for Aug. 23.

    In a court filing, Pope, who remains jailed in Arizona, claimed the woman he is charging with raping in New Mexico was a former girlfriend whom he’d had consensual sex with after she’d been drinking.

    But a judge in Santa Fe County this week denied Pope’s motion to be released pending trial, and instead ordered Pope to be extradited to New Mexico by Aug. 24 to face charges there.

    Stephen D. Aarons, Pope’s Santa Fe attorney, said in a voice message late Friday he had just learned of the Seattle charges and could only speak to Pope’s denials filed in court in connection with the New Mexico charges.

    Pope, who has claimed Western Shoshone and Tlingit heritage, is an activist who has appeared as a spokesman for the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor” to discuss Native-American perspectives on Thanksgiving. Last year, he gave a TEDx Talk in Seattle about taking part in oil-pipeline protests at Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota.

    Pope’s LinkedIn page also describes him as a co-founder and chief executive for several tech startups, and it lists Pope as an attorney who has worked for the Tulalip Tribal Court since February 2012.

    But since his arrest last month, Pope’s heritage and resume have come under dispute. While Pope received a law degree from Seattle University, the Washington State Bar Association has confirmed he is not a licensed lawyer, and the Tulalip Tribes said he never worked as an attorney there.
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    Several tribes with Tlingit and Shoshone members also have said they’ve found no record of Pope’s enrollment, though it’s unclear whether he has claimed membership to any particular tribe.

    The sexual assault investigation of Pope emerged in early June, when a houseguest contacted Santa Fe police. The houseguest, a woman who sometimes stays at Pope’s apartments in Seattle and Santa Fe, said she and Pope’s roommate discovered a hidden camera in the bathroom of Pope’s Capitol Hill apartment. They took the device with them to Santa Fe, discovering that it contained multiple videos of the houseguest showering, according to court records.

    The woman later accessed Pope’s iPad, finding photographs of women and video files of Pope allegedly sexually assaulting several unconscious women, including a Washington woman she recognized.

    That 34-year-old woman, who had known and trusted Pope for years, later told a Seattle police detective she lost memory after Pope gave her a drink while giving her a ride in Santa Fe in 2017. She woke up the next morning in a hotel bed with Pope with her nylons missing, the charging records say.

    The detective’s affidavit filed in King County this week says the alleged victim told police Pope had given her a drink after giving her a ride from a party to his Seattle apartment in July 2017 — “the last thing she remembered” before waking up the next morning in Pope’s bed.

    The woman did not realize she had been raped until last month, when Seattle police showed her a photograph taken from Pope’s computer. The woman recognized herself, curled up into a ball and “immediately started to wail and cry,” the affidavit states.

    The affidavit said police have yet to identify Pope’s third alleged victim, who is identified only as “Jane Doe.” The records noted that “based on the bedding and the room” in the time-stamped video from November 2016 that depicts the woman’s sexual assault, the alleged crime also took place in Pope’s Seattle apartment.

    This article may be copyright protected. The original article can be found at: Seattle Times Newspaper If you don’t already subscribe to The Seattle Times, consider supporting independent journalism today.

  • Native American activist denies rape accusations

    By MARY HUDETZ of the Associated Press

    ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A Native American activist has disputed accusations that he sexually assaulted unconscious women, saying in a New Mexico court filing that text messages, witness statements and other evidence will support his case against rape and other charges.

    Redwolf Pope, 41, said authorities wrongly suggested videos they obtained show him sexually assaulting females who appear to have been drugged.

    The videos represent recordings of consensual sex he had with former girlfriends in the past, which he kept in an encrypted file on his computer, according to the court filing submitted Friday.

    A warrant in Santa Fe charged Pope, who was arrested last week in Phoenix, with sexually assaulting females who appeared to have been slipped a date-rape drug and surreptitiously recording people at apartments in Santa Fe and Seattle. He had residences in both cities, police said.

    Jail records show Pope remains held in Phoenix. His attorney is seeking his release from jail, saying Pope has no prior criminal history and was on his way to Santa Fe to turn himself into authorities when he was arrested.

    A fugitive hearing for Pope is scheduled for Aug. 8 in Phoenix. One of his roommates reported she had found a small video camera in his Seattle apartment’s bathroom. She turned the camera’s memory card over to police after traveling to Santa Fe.

    Pope said he set up the recording devices in his apartments because roommates had stolen from him.

    Santa Fe police have reviewed about two dozen photographs and four videos in their investigation, authorities said.

    Meanwhile, Seattle police interviewed a woman in July who has been identified as one of the victims in the videos. She said she knew Pope, though not as a friend, and had trusted him in the past because of his standing in her tribe.

    The woman told police she encountered Pope at a party in Santa Fe in 2017 and woke up confused the next morning in a hotel room after he had given her an alcoholic iced tea beverage the night before.

    Pope said the woman was a former girlfriend.

    Pope appeared on “The O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News a decade ago to discuss Native American perspectives on Thanksgiving. The show identified his tribal affiliation as Western Shoshone.

    He also delivered a TEDx Talk in Seattle last year about oil pipeline protests at the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota.

    Organizers of the Seattle event described him as having served as a liaison to Native American elders, veterans and others during the 2016 demonstrations. They have removed the video of his talk in the past week from their website.

    “TEDxSeattle was shocked to learn of the criminal charges filed against RedWolf Pope in July 2018,” said a statement replacing the video. “We find the kind of acts alleged in the charges to be abhorrent.”

    Originally published July 31, 2018 at 11:39 am Updated August 1, 2018 at 10:01 am For original article: Seattle Times Article

  • Light Sentence for Ex-Deputy

    DA decries light sentence for ex-deputy in molestation case

    • By Justin Horwath | The New Mexican
    • Updated
    • (…)
    DA decries lighter sentence for ex-deputy in molestation case
    Dustin Bingham is pictured in May in District Court. Luis Sánchez Saturno/New Mexican file photo

    Two teenage girls who were sexually molested by Dustin Bingham, an extended family member and former Santa Fe County sheriff’s deputy, asked a state district judge for leniency at his sentencing hearing Wednesday, District Attorney Marco Serna said.

    Serna said such behavior is not uncommon among victims of sexual molestation within families; the girls’ mother also asked District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer for leniency in sentencing Bingham, a relative of the mother.

    Serna, whose office on Wednesday issued a statement calling Bingham a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” said all three family members “minimized” the molestation.

    “They loved their family member despite what he did,” the district attorney said.

    Marlowe Sommer on Wednesday sentenced Bingham to 15 years in prison but suspended 10 years, Serna said, ordering him to undergo 10 years of supervised probation.

    “Bingham was a wolf in sheep’s clothing while he served as a sheriff’s deputy in Santa Fe County and that made him extremely dangerous,” Serna’s news release said. “I am disappointed that he was not sentenced to more years in prison, but we will continue to seek justice for our innocent victims.”

    Bingham in November pleaded guilty to five felony counts in the high-profile case brought by Serna’s office in August.

    The 37-year-old former lawman admitted to fondling the girls, whom he had watched after and who were under the age of 18 during the time of the criminal sexual contact. Bingham also pleaded guilty to two felony counts of child solicitation through electronic communication and sexual exploitation of children in connection with communications he had with a girl who was not a relative.

    Serna said the girl whom Bingham admitted soliciting online told the judge that Bingham deserved the maximum prison sentence of 25 years and described to the judge the psychological damage of the abuse.

    Bingham on Wednesday apologized and asked for leniency, according to Serna.

    Santa Fe County Sheriff Robert Garcia said in an interview on Wednesday that Bingham “got what he deserved” and that he has “no sympathy for people like this.”

    According to the affidavit for Bingham’s arrest, the molesting occurred between November 2015 and April 2017. The girls had told Bingham’s father about the abuse, the affidavit says, and when the father confronted his son, Bingham told him, “Dad, I’m guilty,” according to the affidavit. The father told police that he tried to handle the situation with religious leaders at the Mormon church the family attends in Los Alamos, the affidavit says. But he then decided to report the allegations to police.

    Los Alamos police arrested Bingham in May.

    Bingham resigned from the sheriff’s office in February amid an internal investigation, after working there since April 2015, the sheriff has said. Bingham previously worked for the Los Alamos Police Department.

     

    Justin Horwath can be reached at 505-986-3017 or jhorwath@sfnewmexican.com.

  • Rape Charges Dismissed

    Taos NM – Deputy Eighth Judicial District Attorney announced that all charges against Frankie Giron are being dismissed. A three-day jury trial had been scheduled later this month on criminal sexual penetration charges. Santa Fe defense attorney Steve Aarons explained that his client had told police when he was arrested that the woman had consented to sex and had made plans to see him again for a second date at the Gorge bridge.

  • Conviction in Taos CSP Case

    After a four day trial in Taos before Judge Emilio J. Chavez, David Lewis was convicted of all four counts of criminal sexual penetration (CSP) of a minor. He was remanded into custody for a 60-day evaluation before his sentence in January 2018. He will receive a minimum of eighteen years in prison with the maximum exposure in excess of sixty (60) years.

  • Not Guilty Verdicts

    After severing counts two counts and the court dismissing a third count of criminal sexual contact of a minor, an Albuquerque jury deliberated for 40 minutes before acquitting Harold Potter of Las Vegas, Nevada, of the remaining two counts. Inconsistencies in the alleged victim’s testimony was a primary reason for the verdicts.

  • Not Guilty of Alleged Child Molesting

    United States v Theodore Largo

    Case Number 1:08-cr-02830-JCH

    Practice Area:
    Child abuse, Federal
    Outcome:
    Jury found him not guilty on all counts
    Description:
    Navajo father charged with sexual abuse of his own son. FBI laboratory result shown to be invalid by defense expert Richard Coughlin, Ph.D.
    Court appointed (CJA) case. After week long trial, jury deliberated for only an hour or two before returning with not guilty verdicts as to all counts.