State Supreme Court refuses to lessen prosecutors' burden for pretrial detention
Jul. 2—The New Mexico Supreme Court issued an opinion Thursday affirming its position that a defendant cannot be held without bond just because they've been charged with a serious crime.
State prosecutors must present proof a person is dangerous and that no circumstances besides incarceration will protect the community from them until their trial, justices wrote in a ruling issued Thursday
"To allow the State to rely solely on the nature and circumstances of the charged offenses ... would all but eliminate ... the constitutional burden of the State," the Court concluded in its unanimous opinion by Justice Michael E. Vigil.
"The opinion provides the legal reasoning for the justices upholding the denial of pretrial detention of Jesse Mascareno-Haidle, who was charged with residential burglaries in the Albuquerque area," according to a statement issued Thursday by Barry Massey, a spokesman for the Administrative Office of the Courts.
The 2nd Judicial District Attorney's Office tried unsuccessfully to have Mascareno-Haidle detained until trial in two separate cases in 2021, according to the statement.
In the first case, the state presented an arrest warrant affidavit from a police detective as evidence of Mascareno-Haidle's dangerousness, the statement says. In the second, a police detective testified Mascareno-Haidle had admitted to committing about
28 burglaries and was a suspect in dozens more.
Mascareno-Haidle argued he'd complied with initial conditions of release in the two cases.
The state Court of Appeals upheld prosecutors' appeal of the second judge's decision, according to the statement, prompting the District Attorney's Office to file the appeal with the state Supreme Court.
Justices noted in their opinion prosecutors "failed to present any evidence or make any argument that no release conditions could be imposed to reasonably protect the safety of any other person or the community." This left the judge "with no alternative but to deny the State's motion to detain Defendant," the justices decided.
The New Mexico Constitution guarantees a person charged with a crime the right to remain free pending trial in most circumstances.
But prior to 2016, many defendants remained jailed simply because they couldn't afford a bond that would allow them to await trial out of custody.
Voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2016 that reformed the bond system, doing away with money bond in most cases and empowering district courts to hold defendants indefinitely until trial only if prosecutors showed "clear and convincing evidence" a defendant posed too great a danger to be released, even with conditions.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and 2nd Judicial District Attorney Raúl Torrez, the Democratic nominee for attorney general, supported a push by some lawmakers to alter pretrial detention rules in the last legislative session.
They backed a bill that would have shifted the burden of proof in some cases from the prosecution to the defense, requiring defendants accused of certain crimes to prove why they were not a danger and should be released.
The bill — opposed by the state Law Offices of the Public Defender — died in the House of Representatives.