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.