Stephen D Aarons (born: November 23, 1954) is a New Mexico attorney, born in St. Louis and noted for representing clients in death penalty and high profile cases. These include the successful appeal in 2012 of the Marino Leyba, Jr., double murder conviction, and the 2008 Robertson High School hazing case.^{[3] [4][5]} Aarons is an active member in good standing of the New Mexico and Missouri State bar associations, and has been a member of the bar of the United States Supreme Court since 1983.^[6] In 1993 Aarons received an AV rating from Martindale-Hubbell,^[7][8], and holds the highest possible ratings from Avvo,^[9] Superlawyers,^[10] and the National Trial Lawyers Association (USA)^[11]

Career

Early Career

At the 1975 College Democrats of America convention in Atlanta, Aarons was elected National President and he was reelected the following year at the The Mayflower in the District of Columbia. Aarons participated in a State Department sponsored trip with the United States Youth Council to visit Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and retired Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir as a precursor to their Camp David Accords.^[12] After law school, Aarons began his practice of law as a VISTA lawyer in Great Falls, MT. Much of this work was devoted to general civil litigation and misdemeanor defense for Native American clients including members of the Niitsítapi or Blackfeet Nation. Aarons was then commissioned as a United States Army Judge Advocate. After completing the Basic Course, Aarons was assigned to the VII Corps in Augsburg, (West) Germany. Months later, Aarons received orders to serve as the Command Judge Advocate for the United States Army Field Station Augsburg. During three years on active duty in Augsburg, Aarons prosecuted over 50 courts-martial and acted as individual defense counsel in the murder trial of an American Serviceman in Nürnberg, (West) Germany and served in that capacity in several other courts-martial throughout Europe.^[13] Aarons was a SOFA legal observer for criminal trials in Germany courts against defendants who were United States citizens and also inspected German prisons where United States citizens remained in custody. In 1983, Aarons was admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States.^[14]

Oxford Debate

After Aarons completed his three year tour of active duty, he remained in Europe and studied International Law at Oxford University while residing with the De La Salle Brothers and Greyfriars at their 1 Marston Ferry residence. During residence, Aarons taught University of Maryland evening law courses to US airman at RAF Upper Heyford. Aarons agreed to take the Second Affirmative in a Oxford Union debate entitled “There is no moral difference between the foreign policies of the United States and the Soviet Union.” British Leftist Professor E. P. Thompson and US Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger were the keynote speakers. Aarons, then a US Army Reserve Captain and Judge Advocate, spoke in favor of the proposition in part because of widespread concerns over the USS New Jersey recently firing hundreds of rounds from its 16″ guns into Beruit, Lebanon, destroying a hospital and killing countless civilians (See USS New Jersey in the Lebanese Civil War), all in retaliation for the suicide bombing of 288 US Marines there. (See 1983 Beirut Barracks Bombing). Both Thompson and Weinberger referred to Aarons’ argument, Weinberger straying from his typed script^[15] to praise the young Captain while pointing out that such dissent by a Soviet counterpart might have resulted in his court-martial! ^[16]. Somewhat surprisingly, Weinberger won this debate, by a vote of 271 to 240, ^[17] thereby astonishing the American embassy staff in London, which had urged him not to participate in it, ^[18] and eliciting a congratulatory phone call early the next morning from British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. ^[19] According to John Lewis Gaddis in his article “On Moral Equivalency and Cold War History” in Ethics & International Affairs, Volume 10 (1996), Weinberger was instrumental later that month in withdrawing the USS New Jersey and formulating a different strategy for the United States in the Middle East. ^[20]

Capital Defender

By 1985, Aarons had returned to the United States and became employed as an assistant public defender in Clovis, New Mexico, moving the next year to Santa Fe. There he was assigned as defense counsel in several dozen death penalty cases. He assisted Governor Toney Anaya in the commutation of death sentences for all five death row inmates in New Mexico including Aarons’ client Eddie Lee Adams,^[21] due to growing opposition in New Mexico to capital punishment. Even after Aarons left the public defender department for private practice, he continued to accept assignments under Public Defender contract to handle death penalty cases until 2009, when New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson signed into law a bill abolishing capital punishment in thst state.^[22]

Private Practice

In 1989 until 1992, Aarons practiced civil and criminal law at the Jones Firm^[23] in Santa Fe. Since November 1992 he has remained in private practice as the managing partner of Aarons Law Firm PC,^[24] accepting state and federal criminal cases throughout New Mexico.

Notable Cases

Torreon Cabin Murders

In 1997 Aarons was hired to represent Shaun Wilkins, who was accused with three others in the 1995 murders of Ben Anaya Jr., 17; his girlfriend, Cassandra Sedillo, 23; and her two sons, Matthew Garcia, 3, and Johnny Ray Garcia, 4. The four were found dead in a cabin in April of 1996 in the Manzano Mountains near Torreon, New Mexico.^[25] The case against Wilkins was weak,^[26][27] the trial ended with a hung jury, and the district attorney eventually declined to retry the case.^{[28] [29]} In 2002 Wilkins and codefendant Roy Buchner hired civil rights attorney Ray Twohig to file a lawsuit against police for malicious prosecution in the Torreon case. In January 2011 a federal jury declined to award damages to them.^[30] Two other defendants were found guilty; Lawrence Nieto was convicted before the Wilkins trial and was originally sentenced to 130 years in prison. Errors in the prosecution caused Nieto’s conviction to be overturned, and before Nieto’s retrial he brokered a plea agreement involving a 39 year sentence. NM Corrections officials have twice mistakenly released Nieto. ^[31]

Robert Fry Trials

In 2002 Aarons accepted a special NM Public Defender contract to represent Robert Fry, who had already been convicted in the death of Betty Lee, 36 from Shiprock, NM. Fry had received a death sentence for the Lee murder but was also facing first degree murder counts involving the 1996 fatal stabbings of 18-year-old Matthew Trecker and 25-year-old Joseph Fleming at a counter culture store in Farmington, NM, and throwing 40-year-old Donald Tsosie off a cliff in Navajo country.^[32] During a police interview, Fry implicated himself in the earlier crimes and gave detailed “theories” of how the crimes were carried out. ^[33][34] Robert Fry was found guilty again in the Tsosie trial, and a third time in the Trecker and Fleming trial. Unlike the death sentence in Lee, the juries in Tsosia and Trecker/Fleming did not impose the death penalty. Despite New Mexico’s abolition of capital punishment, Robert Fry and another man were grandfathered and, as a result, Fry remains on death row awaiting execution for the muirder of Betty Lee.^[35]

LANL Security Breach

The family of Jessica Quintana hired Aarons in 2006 to represent her for sneaking classified documents out of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Hired right out of high school, Quintana could not finish her work before the contract deadline and decided to take some of the classified work home; she walked unchallenged into her top secret vault and downloaded information onto a computer flash drive. She also removed 228 pages of classified documents about underground nuclear weapons tests in the 1970s, and took the material home.^[36] The case received international attention from the media including a special report by CBS Evening News, a front page article in Newsweek,^[37] and articles in the London Times and the Washington Post.^[38] As soon as Aarons brokered a plea bargain with the Department of Justice, Quintana pled guilty to one misdemeanor, received one year of supervised release, and cooperated fully with FBI investigators.^[39]

Tak and Pung Sil Yi Murder

In 2007 Tak and Pung Sil Yi were brutally murdered in their Albuquerque home. Two magazine salespeople, Michael Lee and Travis Rowley, were charged with capital murder. Aarons acted as defense counsel for Rowley, while Lisa Hood acted for Michael Lee. Defense counsel argued Rowley’s confession was obtained via trickery, which was supported by the lack of forensic evidence linking the pair to the crime. Charges were eventually dismissed after another man, Clifton Bloomfield, connected to the scene by forensic evidence, confessed to the murders. ^[40][41]. The City of Albuquerque settled with Lee in his civil rights lawsuit, agreeing to pay him $950,000 in damages.^[42]. Rowley’s suit is pending trial.

Robertson High School Hazing Case

In 2008, the national media learned of a hazing incident at the Robertson High School in Las Vegas, New Mexico.^[43] involving five football players as respondents: Michael G (age 17); Lucas M (17); and Steven G (17); Marcus G (16); and, Santiago A (16). Santiago’s family hired Aarons, who maintained the allegations were overblown and, while a horrible hazing situation had occurred, Santiago was not an active participant. ^[44] The case drew national attention ending up on CBS and Fox News.^[45][46][47] In the end Santiago would enter a plea of no contest. Judge Jim Hill agreed with the defense arguments, saying, “Based upon what I have heard in the evidence … it is my belief that you have less involvement than the other five individuals involved in this case.” Instead of putting Santiago in detention, Judge Hill originally sentenced Santiago to community service and sealed his juvenile adjudication from the public.^[48] Six victims later sued the school board, and received a $5.25 million settlement.^[49]

Hernandez Medicaid Trial

In 2012 Aarons found himself enlisted as a defense attorney in a Medicaid fraud case. His client Catherine Hernandez and her husband Joe were charged with Medicaid fraud and falsifying documents^[50] related to their 29 and 32 year old sons with spina bifida. Aarons maintained Hernandez and her husband were being unfairly prosecuted for mistakes on complicated paperwork, which happened due to the elimination of case workers by the state. The Hernandezes were convicted by a Jury in January 2012. ^[51][52] The couple were later ordered to repay $59,000.00.^[53] In light of their conviction Aarons told the ABQJournal Medicaid needed to provide better guidance on complex billing by family care providers so that others didn’t end up facing similar prosecution.^[54] The case has been used as an example by some to suggest New Mexico needs to improve its Human Services Departments monitoring of Medicaid, is alleged to be prone to waste.^[55]

Terry Clark

As a public defender, Aarons represented two capital defendants who were spared death warrants but, after being tried a second time years later, both were sentenced to death and were executed. In 1986, appellate defender Sheila Lewis and Aarons were assigned to represent Terry Clark. Clark had confessed to his minister to killing a young child. In a rare legal maneuver, Clark pled guilty to first degree murder in hopes of being sentenced before Governor Toney Anaya completed his term of office. However, district judge Stanley F. Frost refused to hold a sentence hearing before Anaya’s last day in office and, as a result, Clark was not among the five men on death row whose death sentences were commuted by Anaya to life in prison without possibility of parole. The following year, a jury in Tucumcari, New Mexico returned with a death sentence against Clark. The New Mexico Supreme Court eventually overturned that sentence, however, finding reversible error in misleading the jury as to the meaning of life in prison. Clark was entitled to another trial and the NM Public Defenders assigned a prominent capital defense lawyer, Gary Mitchell, to represent Clark. Aarons testified at the 1996 retrial in Silver City, New Mexico. So did former governor Anaya, who testified why he would have commuted Clark’s sentence had he the legal authority to do so. The second jury also returned a death sentence and, after Clark abandoned his habeas corpus petition, he was executed by lethal injection on 6 November 2001.^{[56] [57]}

Gregg Braun

In 1989, Aarons represented Gregg Braun. Braun was eventually convicted of killing five people in four states, the last victim at a truck stop in Springer, New Mexico. Braun was the son of a prominent Kansas lawyer, Lelyn Braun, had a college degree in criminal justice, and no criminal history before his week long cocaine induced killing spree.^[58] Aarons handled Braun’s preliminary hearing as to the Springer murder and negotiated with New Mexico prosecutors. Gary Mitchell eventually tried the case in Las Vegas, New Mexico and Braun was found guilty but mentally ill. The New Mexico jury spared Braun a death sentence, as did juries in Kansas and Texas. However Oklahoma imposed the death penalty as to the murder in its jurisdiction, and Braun was executed on July 20, 2000.^[59].

Other Cases

Aarons handled countless other high profile cases throughout the State of New Mexico, including:

• In 1986, Cloyd Norman Hall was arrested in Tucumcari, New Mexico for the fatal shooting of a state policeman^{[60] [61]} and faced a death penalty trial in Fort Sumner, New Mexico.^[62] The jury acquitted Hall of first degree murder, and he was sentenced by Judge Stanley F. Frost for lesser crimes.

• In the October 1988 trial of David Morton for the murder of his Santa Fe neighbor, Terri Lynn Mulvaney,^[63] the judge declared a hung jury after eleven of twelve jurors voted not guilty.^[64] The lone holdout was the foreman. Twenty years later, Morton confessed in prison to several murders including Mulvaney, and was sentenced to life in prison as to each.^[65]

• Later that month, Samuel Edward Wilson of Mountainair, New Mexico was convicted of murder for hire, but all twelve jurors voted to spare his life from the death penalty.^[66]. Aarons represented Wilson before the New Mexico Supreme Court, which overturned the conviction two years later.^[67]

• Pierre Burck, ex Marine, acquitted in the 1999 homicide of his cousin in Ohkay Owingeh, New Mexico^[68]

• Alfredo DeVargas was acquitted in Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico for the February 2001 fatal shooting Lloyd Griego.^[69]

• Fred Mestas claimed self defense and in 2002 was acquitted in the Cottonwood Trailer Park homicide in Santa Fe.^[70]

• In 2003, Orlando Torrez fatally shot a young woman at a party in Taos, New Mexico.. After his conviction of first degree murder, Aarons represented him on appeal and the New Mexico Supreme Court overturned his conviction.^[71] Torrez was retried and again convicted of first degree murder.^[72]

• Anthony Anaya, a Santa Fe tow truck driver, was acquitted of murder in the November 2004 shooting death of a suspected drug dealer, claiming to have been at the “wrong place, wrong time.”^[73] Two other defendants were later convicted of murder.^[74]

• Elias Romero was tried in 2008 for murder and aggravated arson. Three others had already been tried and convicted.^[75] The Taos jury acquitted Romero of all counts.^[76]

Personal Life

In 1954, Steve Costello was born in St. Louis to Donald Eugene Costello and Teddye Ann [nee Ward] Costello and was raised with two younger brothers Kenneth (1957) and Thomas Costello (1961). The family lived in Chicago from 1957 to 1967 and then returned to Ballwin, Missouri where Costello graduated in 1972 from Parkway West High School. Costello received his undergraduate degree from George Washington University and his law degree from Saint Louis University Law School. Costello attempted in May and June 1979, with his brother Tom Costello paddling a donated Fulbot kayak, to break the world record for longest journey swimming set in 1932. They began on the Missouri River just below the dam in Yankton, South Dakota and continued into the Mississippi River until arriving at Cairo, Illinois where a water spout halted the project.^[77]. After a failed wedding engagement in 1979, Costello changed his name to Stephen Donald Aarons.

Aarons married Doris Valdez in a private civil ceremony in 1992 before Justice Stanley Frost and, the following year, they renewed their vows in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel of Saint Francis Cathedral. They have one child, Ian (b. 1996). They built their retirement home in the foothills above Tesuque, New Mexico. Doris and Ian are recognized by the Apache nation due to ancestral blood.

In 2008, after twenty-eight years of reserve service, Aarons retired from the US Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps^[78] as a Lieutenant Colonel. Aarons helped coach his son’s Carlos Gilbert elementary school basketball team, which went undefeated one year,^[79], and a regional championship little league baseball squad. Aarons served four years as head coach of the St. Michael’s High School chess team; in Ian’s last year at St. Michael’s, the chess team took home the 2012 NMAA state championship trophy.^[80]

External Links

New Mexico Criminal Defense Lawyers Association
Who’s Who in American Law
Avvo Biography
National Institute for Trial Advocacy
US Army Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School Alumni
Martindale-Hubbell Legal Directory
College Democrats of America
Aarons Law PC

References

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Stephen Aarons, that was deleted or is being discussed for deletion, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Author(s): Ohnoitsjamie Search for “Stephen Aarons” on Google View Wikipedia’s deletion log of “Stephen Aarons”