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Trial for Fabian Gonzales postponed

Kai Porter
September 27, 2018 05:45 PM

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.— The trial for one of the suspects charged in the child abuse death of 10-year-old Victoria Martens is now on hold.

Fabian Gonzales’ trial was scheduled to start Oct. 15.

However, Judge Charles Brown canceled Gonzales’ trial date during what should have been a routine status hearing.

Brown made the decision after prosecutors said they wanted the New Mexico Court of Appeals to decide if certain evidence the judge banned from the trial should actually be allowed.

The evidence includes statements made by Gonzales’ cousin, Jessica Kelley, who is also charged in connection with Victoria’s death.

“She made some statements that implicated herself and this defendant,” said deputy district attorney Greer Rose. “We feel those statements are key in showing this defendant’s role in the murder of Victoria.”

Prosecutors are also hoping the court of appeals will reverse Judge Brown’s decision to not allow evidence about Gonzales’ drug use during the trial.

“It wasn’t just his past drug use,” said Rose. “It was evidence of drug use right around the time of the murder. We feel like that’s important to show the overall picture of what’s going on.”

There’s no timeline for when the court of appeals will make a decision.

Once it does, Judge Brown will set a new trial date.

In response, the defense has filed a demand for a speedy trial.

The defense claims the state’s appeal was filed to delay the trial and gain a strategic advantage.
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Judge grants Fabian Gonzales’ request for new attorney

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – A judge has granted a motion for Fabian Gonzales to hire a bring on a new attorney. The parents of Fabian Gonzales hired Stephen Aarons to represent him instead of a public defender. The request comes just one month out from the expected start of his trial. He’s accused of child abuse resulting in the death of Victoria Martens.

Last week, Aarons filed a motion to dismiss the charge.

Prosecutors have already dropped murder, kidnapping and rape charges against Gonzales. That came after investigators learned that Gonzales and Martens’ mother, Michelle Martens, were across town when Victoria was murdered.

Prosecutors say Gonzales is still partly responsible for Victoria’s death because he left her with his cousin Jessica Kelley, who is charged with murder.

Jury selection in Gonzales’ trial is set to begin on October 15. The judge said Gonzales’ new attorney will need to be prepared for the start of the trial.
Motion to Dismiss in Victoria Martens Case

Albuquerque NM – Attorney Steve Aarons of Santa Fe hit the ground running in the Victoria Martens case. Entering his appearance on behalf of defendant Fabian Gonzales on Tuesday afternoon, Aarons immediately filed a motion to dismiss the last serious felony against his client, child abuse resulting in death. Victoria was murdered in on August 23, 2016 and Mr. Gonzales was initially charged with raping and murdering the ten-year old. Victoria’s mother Michelle Martens was also charged with murder. Later the police admitted that Michelle Martens had falsely confessed to the murder, and that Gonzales and she were not in the apartment when Victoria died of strangulation.

The prosecutors dismissed the murder, kidnapping and rape charges. Instead, they charged Gonzales with intentional child abuse resulting in death and tampering with evidence. The new motion seeks to dismiss the child abuse count as a matter of law. “Set the innocent free,” said Aarons, “and start prosecuting the person who murdered Victoria Martens. She deserves nothing less.” Jury selection is scheduled to begin on October 15th.
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.”
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.

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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
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.”

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