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

Category: Rio Arriba

  • Bill to expunge criminal records moves forward in Santa Fe

    ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.- House Bill 370, which would give people the chance to clear their criminal record, is moving forward in the legislature.

    It passed the full House in February and passed its first committee in the Senate Tuesday.

    Rep. Antonio “Moe” Maestas is sponsoring the bill.

    He said it would give people who are convicted of a misdemeanor or non-violent felony the change to have their criminal record erased after they serve their sentence.

    It would also apply to identity theft cases.

    “So, when you’re eligible, you can petition the court, obviously a lot of horrible crimes you’re ineligible, but you can petition the court and take these off court websites and make them unavailable for the public,” Maestas said. “They’re still available to law enforcement and they’re still available if those federal background checks or state required background checks require an extensive background.”

    Depending on the crime, people could face a waiting period before they could petition the court.

    The decision to expunge a person’s record would ultimately be up to a judge.

    Maestas believes it would be easier for someone to find a job or get housing if their criminal record is cleared.

    “If you got arrested in your early 20s, and you’re applying for a big, real job in your 40s, you have to explain it, that’s not who you are,” Maestas said. “Over the course of 10 or 20 years, you can expunge those arrest records which remain on your record and have a fresh start for employment”

    However, Terri Cole, president and CEO of the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce, said the bill means employers wouldn’t have the full picture of who they’re hiring.

    “The bill would wipe out the criminal histories of not only some non-violent offenders but some serious offenders and that is a big problem for business,” Cole sale.

    She believes an employer should be able to know all the facts about an applicant’s history, including any criminal record.

    “Business has to be able to understand the criminal histories of people they are hiring because those some people will be interacting with their clients, with their employees, with their customers, so they have a right to know who they’re hiring and what those criminal histories look like,” Cole said.

    The bill is now set to be heard in the Senate Judiciary Committee. If it passes, it will head to the Senate floor for a vote.

    Track this bill during the legislative session

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  • He believed every car was out to kill him

    By Sami Edge | sedge@sfnewmexican.com

    Maybe it was about a trip to Colorado gone sour. Maybe it was deeper than that.

    Whatever the case, Mark Hice and Lucas “Louie” Martinez were feuding. And the disagreement between the two Española men escalated into death threats, gunfire on a highway and, ultimately, the fatal shooting of an innocent teen.

    Recorded interviews by police and other police documents tell the story of how the bad blood between Hice and Lucas Martinez led to the death of 18-year-old Cameron Martinez of Alcalde on the northbound stretch of N.M. 68 near Ohkay Hotel Casino on the evening of Oct. 4.

    Hice and two of his friends are accused of shooting into a blue Subaru that they believed Lucas Martinez or his friends were in. But inside the car were Cameron Martinez and three of his friends, who had nothing to do with the dispute between Hice and Lucas Martinez.

    Cameron Martinez, a recent graduate of Española Valley High School and an intern at Los Alamos National Laboratory, died from a gunshot to the head. His friends were shot as well and survived.

    Hice, 22, sobbed when New Mexico State Police interviewed him after the shooting, according to an audio recording.

    “I’m sorry,” Hice said, breaking down during an interview. “I just keep seeing the kid’s face.”

    Hice and the other alleged shooters — Anton Martinez, 19, of Santa Cruz, and Axel Zamarron, 17, of Española — are each charged with first-degree murder. Brittany Garcia, 21, of Ojo Caliente, who police say was driving the car in which Hice rode, also faces a murder charge. Three other females — ages 23, 17 and 16 at the time of the shooting — face lesser charges.

    The bad blood

    It isn’t clear from police documents when Hice and Lucas Martinez, 19, of Española, first crossed paths or when their relationship began to go south.

    But Christopher Hice, a brother of Mark Hice, and Michelle Mascareñas, Mark Hice’s mother, told authorities the relationship soured after Mark Hice and Lucas Martinez had gone to Colorado to pick up marijuana.

    Sometime during the trip, Lucas Martinez ditched Hice, forcing him to hitchhike home, Mascareñas told police.

    Christopher Hice told police his brother was angry when he returned to New Mexico and went to Lucas Martinez’s house to fight him. In the altercation, Christopher Hice said, Lucas Martinez threatened to shoot Mark Hice and bury him in the backyard of Lucas Martinez’s home, known as the “Trap.”

    Mark Hice also told his brother that Lucas Martinez had threatened to put a hit on him.

    In a recorded interview, a state police officer questioned that story.

    “Do you think it was a drug debt or anything?” the officer asked Christopher Hice. “You think he might have ripped him off or something?”

    “I don’t know. Usually, he tells me the truth,” Christopher Hice said of his brother. “But honestly, like, he’s been doing bad things and I don’t know if he was trying to cover it up saying he was going to Colorado for some weed.”

    Mark Hice told police that Lucas Martinez and his friends sent him death threats and said they would kick down his door and “shoot me in my face.” They also threatened his children, ages 4 and 5, Hice said.

    State police recovered social media photos that appear to show friends of Lucas Martinez mocking Hice while holding guns.

    The shooting

    Mark Hice told police that he hadn’t heard from Lucas Martinez in the few days leading up to the shooting. But on that day, a Thursday, as he and girlfriend Garcia were driving around Española in a black Dodge Charger, they saw Lucas Martinez’s friends tailing them in a black Cadillac Escalade.

    The Cadillac followed Hice and Garcia northbound on N.M. 68, police reports say.

    Around 4 p.m., an Alcalde woman reported the two cars to state police. The caller’s family was driving northbound, she told a dispatcher, when they ended up between the Charger and the Escalade near the Ohkay Hotel Casino. She saw a man reach out of the Charger with a black handgun and fire three shots “in the direction of her and her family” and the Escalade behind them.

    Hice told police that occupants of the Cadillac shot first, so he fired backed as a warning.

    “I got scared, so I reached out the window with it and popped three shots toward the ground,” he said. “I fired off just warning shots, just to get them away from us.”

    Officers didn’t find the cars involved.

    After that afternoon shooting, Hice’s mother told police, her son was “paranoid because he believed every car was out to kill him,” reports say.

    Police reports say Hice and Garcia switched cars in Ojo Caliente in the late afternoon of Oct. 4 before heading back to Española.

    Hice bought ammunition, he told police. Then he met up with friends, drank liquor and distributed guns to a few of them: a Colt 1911 for Anton Martinez, a Glock .45 for Zamarron and a Mac-11 for himself.

    The three and their friends started to drive again in two cars and headed north on N.M. 68 when, apparently, they got spooked. They thought Lucas Martinez or his friends were on to them.

    Hice told police the blue Subaru pulled up behind the cars he and his friends were in, driving aggressively, before it started to pass in the left lane.

    “I got scared and thought it was them [Lucas Martinez or friends] because I saw one of their windows down,” Hice told police. “That’s when I thought it was them so all of us, it just, you know, we were in that thing, and we wanted to defend ourselves.”

    Hice told police that Zamarron, who was in the car in front of Hice, started firing first. Then his car joined in.

    Hice said he fired nine rounds. He said Zamarron emptied a full clip and that Anton Martinez shot once.

    Zamarron remembers things slightly differently. He told police that as the Subaru was passing, he heard shots. Thinking his friend had just been shot at, police reports say, Zamarron leaned out the window of the car and started shooting.

    But he told police he didn’t fire a full clip or hit Cameron Martinez with any of his bullets.

    “I aimed toward the floor,” he told police, according to their written reports.

    Not long after the shooting, a state police officer pulled over to help the occupants of the Subaru, which had stopped in the median on N.M. 68. He found Cameron Martinez dead and the three occupants others shot.

    The arrests

    In the days after the shooting, Hice and Garcia turned themselves in to state police. Police searched two homes for Anton Martinez before he turned himself in. Zamarron surrendered after police surrounded his home Oct. 7.

    Zamarron told police he’d never hung out with Hice before the night of Oct. 4. Zamarron had decided to be friends with Hice because Hice did not like the people charged with shooting and killing Nicholas Kaye, Zamarron’s best friend, during a shootout at an Española gas station in June.

    Police documents say Hice had been living with Anton Martinez prior to the shooting. Hice’s mother told police that Martinez had “lured Mark into the ‘gangster life’ and had Mark selling cocaine with him.”

    According to police interview recordings, Anton Martinez told police he was innocent but wouldn’t answer questions without a lawyer.

    In an email Friday, Anton Martinez’s defense lawyer, Stephen Aarons, said Hice “has apologized in the jail for his police statements” and that Hice’s family “is just hoping to avoid some of the consequences for the shooting.”

    Aarons said Anton Martinez’s defense in court will be that he only fired one round after the group had passed Cameron Martinez’s car because “he didn’t want Hice or the girls to think he was afraid or not ‘part of it.’ ”

    Lawyers for Hice and Lucas Martinez did not return calls for comment.

    Anton Martinez, Hice, Zamarron and Garcia are being held in jail without bond as the cases against them wind through state District Court.

    Hice’s past

    In addition to first-degree murder, Hice faces charges of shooting at or from a motor vehicle, conspiracy and tampering with evidence in the death of Cameron Martinez.

    It isn’t his first trouble with the law.

    In 2015, court records show, Hice was charged with false imprisonment and battery against a household member when his girlfriend told police that Hice trapped her inside an apartment and shoved her away from the door.

    Police found the woman with a red mark on her chest, court records show. Hice told police he was arguing with the woman and got angry when she told him she didn’t want to be with him anymore. Charges in that case were dropped.

    Hice was also charged with driving under the influence of marijuana and possessing drug paraphernalia in 2017, but those charges were dropped as well.

    Lucas Martinez is not facing charges related to any of the shootings on N.M. 68 on Oct. 4. But he still has legal troubles.

    Lucas Martinez faces charges of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon in the shooting of an Española woman in October. He also faces charges of contributing to the delinquency of a minor after two boys reported getting shot accidentally while hanging out with Lucas Martinez and friends, drinking alcohol and handling guns in November.

    One of the boys told police that Lucas Martinez “is known for carrying and distributing illegal narcotics” from his home.

    The District Attorney’s Office has asked a judge to hold Lucas Martinez in jail pending his trial, arguing he is a danger to the community.

    Lucas Martinez was charged in August with a felony for allegedly possessing a stolen firearm, but the case was dismissed, documents show.

    Copyright 2018 Santa Fe New Mexican | Reprinted with Permission

     

  • Judge Dismisses Construction Fraud Case

    Tierra Amarilla – The criminal charges against Gary Valencia of Taos may have come to an end. He was charged in Taos County with construction fraud and back taxes stemming from a vacation home built in Chama in 2013. Judge McElroy dismissed the case in July 2017 because venue should have been in Rio Arriba. Donald Gallegos, the Eighth Judicial District Attorney, appealed the dismissal but then withdrew his appeal.

    Instead, Mr. Gallegos refiled the same charges in Rio Arriba County. Today Judge Lidyard in Tierra Amarilla heard a second defense motion to dismiss and, once again, dismissed the case. The judge stated that “the district attorney may have withdrawn the appeal because Judge McElroy’s decision had merit.” Previously Mr. Valencia had filed a motion to disqualify the district attorney because Mr. Gallegos’ brother in law was also a subcontractor at the Chama site.

    “The charges against Mr. Valencia were unfounded,” said defense attorney Steve Aarons of Santa Fe. “Gary has worked in the construction industry for 30 years without issue. The jury would have agreed with us but the judge’s decision saved everyone a lot of time and expense. After five years of fighting this case, at great personal hardship, justice was finally served.”

  • A Chance For Change

    By Aaron Cantú, Santa Fe Reporter

    Nine years after his release from prison, Barron Jones has become a leading advocate for criminal justice reform in New Mexico.

    Following several years as a reporter for Española newspaper the Rio Grande Sun, he left for the ACLU of New Mexico in January to lead a project of his own. Now, Jones solicits input about criminal justice reform from people who have felt its effects, including both the formerly incarcerated and victims of crime.

    ACLU-NM’s Campaign for Smart Justice is part of a national effort by the organization to significantly reduce the number of people incarcerated in America, which is the highest in the world and costs about $1 trillion annually when factoring in social costs. Jones agrees that any serious effort at reform must include the perspectives of people who’ve been through the ringer.

    “The goal of the Smart campaign is to pressure [New Mexico] politicians by bringing folks to meetings to say how the system has impacted their lives,” Jones tells SFR. “How families are separated, how they can’t get employment, how their parents are in prison.”

    The ACLU is one group generating ideas for three interim meetings scheduled for mid-July, where two bipartisan legislative committees will discuss various ideas for an omnibus criminal justice reform bill. Some lawmakers believe the departure of Gov. Susana Martinez at the end of year represents the first opportunity in a long while to pass laws that would cut back some of the social costs of incarceration that lead to further imprisonment, and save the state money from not opening new prisons. For example, Martinez vetoed legislation to limit the use of solitary confinement and help former inmates get jobs.

    Rep. Antonio Maestas (D-Albuquerque), who co-chairs the interim Criminal Justice Reform Subcommittee, says the package is possibly the “first ever” major legislation of its kind in the state. It would implement various alternative-to-incarceration ideas like greater investments in diversion and rehabilitation programs for lower-level offenders, and would also address some of the collateral consequences of convictions, like the inability to find work, that lead to more crime and recidivism.

    “I think the big thing we must do is some sort of expungement law to give relief for folks with dings on their criminal history,” Maestas tells SFR by phone. “Once you pay your debt to society, you shouldn’t continually have to come into road blocks.”

    The state’s Sentencing Commission predicts New Mexico’s prison population will steadily increase by 14 percent through 2027. Prison facilities for men and women are already experiencing overcrowding today. New Mexico is also one of 16 states where at least 40 percent of people in state prison were convicted of property or drug offenses. Finding ways to intervene here is key to reform, says Paul Haidle, an attorney at the ACLU who studies consequences of convictions.

    “The answer is going to be either for us to build more prisons, or change how we’re incarcerating people,” Haidle says.

    A major driver of incarceration rates is actually incarceration itself, which hinders people from re-integrating into society in a number of ways. One online database funded partially by the federal Department of Justice lists at least 680 various consequences for a felony conviction in New Mexico.

    Many consequences are specific to licensed careers like law, medicine and nursing, dimming future career prospects. Obtaining things needed to run a business becomes essentially impossible. Other consequences directly affect more people than the convict; for example, the entire household of a person accused of fleeing to avoid felony prosecution or violating probation or parole can become ineligible for food stamps.

    Then there’s the whole social stigma surrounding a conviction, which can’t easily be legislated away. It makes it harder not only to find employment, but housing too.

    Senator Bill O’Neill (D-Albuquerque), an advisory member of the interim Courts, Corrections and Justice Subcommittee, knows this well. Prior to his ongoing stint in the Legislature, he led the Dismas House transitional living program for formerly incarcerated people. In the early 2000s, the organization tried to buy a house for its anchor site in Santa Fe, on Richards Avenue near Walgreens, but NIMBY locals ran them out of town. The house is now in the North Valley of Albuquerque.

    “I think people need to understand that people are coming out of prison anyway,”  O’Neill tells SFR. “Ninety percent of inmates are released. Would you rather have them in supportive residential programs? … I think strongly that an investment in this would pay dividends, [and] it’s borne out in statistics in other states that have gone down this road.”

    Rep. Maestas says many of the provisions that could be included in the omnibus bill come from legislation that had already been passed but vetoed in the past. He’s especially adamant about disallowing the Motor Vehicles Department from suspending licenses for small traffic violations and failure to appear in court.

    “States throughout the country reject [the practice]; we don’t need prosecutors and cops and courts dealing with people who owe 50 bucks,” he says.

    Anybody with other good ideas can show up to the interim meetings at the Roundhouse July 16 through 18, or to a Smart justice program meeting at the Center for Progress and Justice on July 16 with Barron Jones. He especially invites both crime survivors and the accused to show up.

    “I believe folks who have had similar experiences as myself, they’ve fallen through the cracks,” Jones says. “Having their voices help us shape our legislative platform.”

    Support independent journalism by becoming a Friend of the Reporter.

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  • Cordova Trial Will Proceed

    By Vic Vela / Journal Staff Writer

    SANTA FE, N.M. — A Rio Arriba County vehicular homicide case will survive, even though the truck allegedly driven by the defendant in a fatal Memorial Day weekend crash did not.

    A judge Thursday denied a defense motion to dismiss charges against Juan de Dios Cordova, despite his lawyers’ argument that Cordova’s ability to defend himself has been prejudiced because his truck was crushed into scrap metal instead of held as evidence.

    State District Judge T. Glenn Ellington did say that Cordova has legal remedies to ensure that he gets a fair trial. His defense attorneys maintain that the pickup is “the most important piece of evidence in this case.”

    Also Thursday, on a secondary matter, the judge denied defense motions that sought to have Rio Arriba County Sheriff Tommy Rodella held in contempt of court for testimony during a preliminary hearing on Cordova’s case and for comments he made in a radio interview.

    Cordova, 56, is alleged to have been drunk behind the wheel on the High Road to Taos on May 28, before striking and killing motorcyclist Mark Wolfe, 51, of Algodones. Wolfe’s wife, Debbie Hill, 50, was seriously injured. Other friends who were part of a group on motorcycle riders returning from a rally in Red River were also hurt.

    Cordova is accused of fleeing the scene and ditching his truck along the side of the road. He was arrested later at his home in Cordova. A blood sample taken several hours after the wreck showed his blood-alcohol concentration was 0.14 percent, nearly twice the state’s presumed level of intoxication.

    Cordova has claimed he wasn’t driving when the fatal wreck occurred.

    He faces one count of vehicular homicide; two counts of great bodily injury by vehicle; two counts of aggravated DWI; and one count of leaving the scene of an accident.

    The truck that hit Wolfe, which was supposed to held as evidence, was destroyed in a mishap involving a towing company owner who was storing the truck for the Rio Arriba County Sheriff’s Office. Freddie Seeds, owner of Total Secure Towing in Española, sold it as scrap metal and has said he had a deputy’s approval to release the truck.

    Representatives of the Sheriff’s Office and the District Attorney’s Office have denied ever giving Seeds permission to release the vehicle. They found out it had been destroyed during a preliminary hearing on Cordova’s charges that started in September.

    Cordova’s Public Defenders Damian Horne and Kathryn Fischer argue that the state had a duty to preserve the truck. The defense attorneys contend the truck had “mechanical defects” that contributed to the wreck, and it can never be tested by an expert witness. They also claim they’re not able to put on evidence that the pickup’s tires blew out before the crash.

    ‘Murky waters’

    Chief Deputy District Attorney Juan Valencia conceded the truck’s importance in the case, but said that it wouldn’t be prudent to dismiss the charges against Cordova outright.

    “The defense is asking for you to wade into very murky waters on what the destroyed truck might prove,” the prosecutor said. “There’s so much other evidence that the jury is entitled to hear.”

    Valencia also said that the DA’s Office “could not anticipate” the actions of the towing company owner Seeds. The prosecutor said Seeds was “operating under his own thought process” and should have known better than to get rid of a truck in a vehicular homicide case.

    Fischer said that regardless of how the truck came to be destroyed and whose fault it was is a “red herring.”

    “None of that matters,” she argued. “… We have nothing. We’ve been left with nothing.”

    Ellington agreed that the state “clearly had a duty” to preserve the truck, and the pickup and the evidence associated with it is “material” to the case. But, the judge said, “It is possible to construct remedies to protect Mr. Cordova’s due process rights without dismissal of the case.”

    The judge said the defense will be allowed at trial to put on expert testimony about what could have been gained by preserving the truck, as well as “how it came to be destroyed.” The defense team will also be “allowed to argue mechanical failure was a possibility.”

    As for what led to the truck’s demise, Chief Deputy District Attorney Dorie Biagianti Smith said State Police is expected to report findings by January.

    Contempt charges

    Another issue taken up by Ellington on Thursday were accusations by the defense attorneys that Rio Arriba County Sheriff Tommy Rodella had committed contempt of court.

    Two contempt motions were filed. One of them deals with Rodella’s court testimony about telephone conversation he had with a deputy, Paula Archuleta, who is at the center of a dispute over who authored a particular Sheriff’s Office report.

    Horne accused Rodella of stating “outright falsehoods” in his testimony during the preliminary hearing about the duration and nature of his phone call with Archuleta.

    Rodella’s attorney Stephen Aarons countered that the sheriff is standing by his testimony and that “there has to be a knowing falsehood” present for contempt.

    Horne’s other contempt motion is critical of Rodella for going on a radio show and praising his deputies for their “exceptionally fine work in the case,” even though the judge had told the sheriff not to discuss the case.

    Rodella’s “self-congratulatory oration about having gotten their man” over Rio Arriba County airwaves “virtually destroyed” Cordova’s shot at getting a fair trial there, Horne argued.

    Aarons said that there was no gag order in place during or after the preliminary hearing, and the sheriff was trying to defend his office’s handling of the Cordova case. “Attacks on him and the department were made,” Aarons said. “He felt there was another side of it that weren’t discussed in court.”

    The judge rejected both contempt motions. Ellington said the statements that the sheriff made on the radio were akin to protected “political speech.”

    But the judge did order that “no more statements be made publicly in order to protect the (jury pool).”

    As for the other contempt issue, the judge said that “the court knows (contempt) when it sees it. It is an affront on the process and proceedings (of the courtroom),” a line that apparently Ellington didn’t think Rodella crossed.

  • Murder Suspect Gets Probation

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