New Mexico’s courts are caught in a bind.
To fix their antiquated systems and procedures, they need quite a lot of money. But the state Legislature is slashing budgets all around, which will inevitably result in more clerical errors and fewer collected fines.
“Everyone…knows we could use two more judges and 10 more clerks. But we’re not going to get it,” Simpson says. According to Simpson, the courts are staffed with a formula from a decade-old workforce study based on inaccurate population figures.
While the courts wait for the Budget Fairy to bless them with new computers and extra employees, there is another way the state might cut back on the warrant backlog: Amnesty.
A US Marshals Service-funded “Fugitive Safe Surrender” campaign in Las Cruces last month led 1,071 people with bench warrants to begin paying off their tickets, making a significant dent in Doña Ana County’s backlog of 18,400 outstanding warrants.
The campaign was heavily publicized on local TV and in the papers.
Santa Fe Magistrate Court tried something similar last November with its traffic cases. Its budget was rather more modest, and the event was not as successful.
The AOC’s Pacheco says letters were sent to every person with a Magistrate Court traffic warrant issued. Because so much official correspondence goes undelivered, the court also hired a private company to try to track down the warrant holders and reach them by telephone.
Of the 3,000 people the court tried to reach, only 65 showed up, despite the court’s promise that traffic offenders would not be arrested.
“We have some sense that people are afraid,” Pacheco says. “On the first day, people were trickling in. They were all looking at us, waiting for the cops to come around the corner.”
More people came on the second day, once word spread that the court’s no-arrest promise was legit.
“If I could say one thing to the community, it’s that we don’t want people to go to jail” when they show up to take care of a traffic ticket, Pacheco says.
Such promises might be more believable if state executive agencies, local law enforcement and the Legislature adopted certain bench warrant reforms under consideration by the AOC.
The agency’s Simpson and Weinstein hesitate to describe their proposals in detail until the New Mexico Supreme Court approves.
Ideas—some of which have been tried in other states—include doing away entirely with the issuance of bench warrants for certain low-level citations, or making most traffic citations civil, rather than criminal, offenses.
But the AOC’s discussions with local law enforcement agencies have generated no agreement with any proposal, in part thanks to the differences in workload between urban and rural jurisdictions.
“There isn’t a real strong consensus across the board,” Simpson says.
New Mexico Administrative Office of the Courts staff attorney Shari Weinstein is a former prosecutor. She says the AOC is working on a fix for the source of many erroneous bench warrants.
Weinstein says most mistaken arrests originate with the state’s uniform traffic citation, designed by the Motor Vehicle Division. It may be the only such form in the country, AOC officials say, that forces drivers to decide on the spot whether to plead guilty and pay a fine, or to challenge the charge and set a court date. The form also forces patrol officers to act as impromptu field judges, turning what should be a 10-minute exchange of paper into a half-hour trial.
When people change their minds about contesting a citation, the bureaucracy has a seizure; the MVD receives a mystery check in the mail, while a local judge issues another warrant for a driver who failed to appear.
Which, with a slight variation, is basically what happened to Eric Raymond Buckley.
Buckley’s motorcycle, a graduation gift from his father, is a loss; fortunately, he says the insurance company will reimburse its full value. (Basil Grillo, who ran over the bike and left a note, did not respond to SFR’s message.)
ZZ, at least, is doing well, as is Buckley—aside from his fresh sense of cynicism.
Last month, as Buckley waited in line to show his animal control citation, stamped “PAID,” to the Municipal Court judge, he saw a poster inside the courthouse that blew his mind: “Don’t go to jail because of your dog,” it read.
“I couldn’t believe it when I saw that,” Buckley recalls. “[I thought], ‘This is a ticket factory.’” SFR
The judicial inanity and injustice that Corey Pein describes, as seen in the statistics, are appalling. If judicial employees and cops think it’s humorous, let’s make it really funny with a mandatory restitution penalty of $100,000 for every day a citizen is wrongly incarcerated. This malfeasance and misfeasance would stop in an instant.
Once upon a time, local sheriffs and police maintained order. Today, according to these statistics, their main job has become to enforce a myriad of statute offenses, nearly all of which are civil, not criminal, and where no harm has been done to anyone. Another sure way to stop this is to bring total numbers of police in line with other Western states. That means slashing police forces in half. This is based on TWO actual counts of police presence in five states. New Mexico could save a fortune, and a lot of civil upset at the same time.
For particularly onerous jurisdictions like Santa Fe, the scale of this raises, in my mind, fundamental constitutional liberties. As once was done with the state penitentiary, simply place the Santa Fe Police and courts under the administrative supervision of a federal court.
And when the federal administrator starts dispatching local city and county officials to federal penitentiaries, things will change fast, as they did at the state pen.
These travesties persist because those responsible can get away with it.
People of Santa Fe must be a bunch of morons to put up with this kind of treatment.
John, you said it! The truth and nothing but!! People are so used to allowing someone else take care of the problem...the work ethic and problems with these city and county employees act like business as ususal, rushing to quickly handle the situation, & leaving as soon as possible. There seems to be a lack of pride, a reckless abandon, perhaps it is being in a position of "authority" or that no one is questioning what they do or how they are doing it, unless of course, you're an attorney. The thoughtless actions of some county/city workers, leave a foul taste in your mouth and doubts on your mind; widening the gap between citizens and law enforcement. For the few who perform their job duties with courtesy and efficiency, their acts are seldom acknowledged, overshadowed by their co-workers negative deeds. Ask me...I've been threatened, incarcerated (yes, I had one of those warrants that I was not notified about for a traffic ticket); family dog has been threatened to be shot numerous times in the past three years. Recently, I was told to remove myself from the home where I've lived for the past 4 years; law enf has failed to document & file incidents of merit for the numerous times they have been notified, (leaving NO documentation for presentation at court hearings). I am told "I Have No Rights!!" So if you know of any Lawyers who want to defend my rights, contact me, I am in the process of compiling data to file legal proceedings. As an American Citizen of the United States of America, I know that I have rights! Citizens should group together with one loud voice, working to be part of the solution for better government.