Jail Rare for Domestic Violence

People who fight with their intimate partners vigorously enough to generate a call to police have a pretty good chance of escaping jail time, according to a recent study done in Santa Fe.

Out of 174 police reports on domestic violence filed in the city from January through March of 2010, only two perpetrators spent more than a week in jail.

“It’s pretty disturbing,” said Deputy Police Chief Gillian Alessio of the findings, which she said top commanders of the Santa Fe Police Department have reviewed both among themselves and with the 1st Judicial District Attorney’s Office.

Of the incidents that generated a police report, 25 percent yielded an arrest, 6 percent generated a criminal complaint from the district attorney’s office, 1 percent resulted in the arrest of both parties, and the remainder did not result in an arrest or indictment, according to an analysis done by David River and funded by the Santa Fe Police Department.

One concerning finding, according to River, is that, while police arrest rates rise when incidents are more potentially lethal, a drop-off is seen in the most dangerous cases.

Potential lethality of a domestic violence case is measured by factors, such as murder threats or substance abuse, that have been noted in other studies around the nation of domestic violence incidents that escalated to murder.

In New Mexico, 21 homicides in 2008 were committed by an intimate partner and, in 76 percent of those cases, the person had a known history of domestic violence, according to a report submitted to the governor Jan. 1 from the legislatively created New Mexico Intimate Partner Violence Death Review Team.

The Santa Fe study of police reports shows that for the three-month period that was reviewed, in 65 percent of cases, no indicators of lethality were present; 18 percent had a low number of factors, 9 percent moderate and 8 percent a high to extreme risk of lethality.

Arrests were less common in that last group, though.

“That says to me they (perpetrators) know enough to leave the scene,” said River, who is co-facilitator with the Santa Fe Coordinated Community Response Council for this study. “If you leave, there’s not quite a 50-50 chance that nothing is going to happen.”

In other words, if police show up at a domestic violence scene and the alleged perpetrator is no longer there, River’s analysis shows that person is later picked up only about half the time.

“If there’s more of a probability those cases (can become) lethal, maybe we can train our officers to spend a little bit more time looking for (the suspects),” Alessio said.

Officers’ attention to writing up a criminal complaint and statement of fact that could result in a warrant or summons in Magistrate Court also might be beefed up, she added.

‘A lot of frustration’

But some might wonder what incentive police officers have to nail such perpetrators when most of them simply end up back at home or on the street.

“There’s a lot of frustration among officers,” River said. “They say, ‘I’ve been doing this for five years, but I’ve never been called to court (to testify) on a domestic.’”

Of the 50 suspects who were ultimately charged with domestic violence crimes, in 64 percent of the cases the charges are dropped, according to the study. In 28 percent, the suspects were sentenced, and one suspect was acquitted in a jury trial. The remainder of cases were pending, according to the study.

District Attorney Angela “Spence” Pacheco pointed out that the numbers don’t show exactly how many of the cases were sent to her office, which handles cases from Santa Fe, Rio Arriba and Los Alamos counties.

She did say, though, that the ability of her office to successfully prosecute domestic violence cases has been hampered by budget cuts, reducing the number of victim advocates on staff from eight in 2009 to three currently.

“Our budget has decreased 15 percent and our (total) caseload has increased 30 percent,” she said.

A victims advocate ideally would contact a victim of domestic violence shortly after the incident, offering help and guiding the person through the system, gaining their cooperation in gathering evidence and ultimately testifying in court, if needed, Pacheco said.

With the three remaining advocates on staff kept busy keeping up with legally required duties, such as informing victims of a suspect leaving jail, they have little time to work intensively with domestic violence victims, she said.

“It can be four or five months after the incident before we see the victim,” Pacheco said.

She noted that, for a time during the ’90s, the Santa Fe Police Department developed a special response team for domestic violence incidents with specially trained officers and a victims advocate or counselor responding together to the scene. No one has the resources to do that now, she added.

Testifying is key

Without strong support and counseling, victims often refuse to testify against their abusers.

“They’re trying to keep themselves safe,” River said, explaining that victims are afraid they or their children will be killed if they speak out against their abuser.

But cases that go to trial without testimony from the victim often result in acquittal.

Alessio said Santa Fe police once had what she called a “slam-dunk” case with strong and clear evidence, yet the jury still acquitted the abuser when the victim didn’t testify. When polled, jury members essentially said they believed the abuser committed the acts, but “if she didn’t care enough to testify against him, it must not be that important,” Alessio said.

“I don’t know how we get over that,” she said.

Given that sort of attitude among juries, River said he can understand why prosecutors might not want to pursue a case without testimony from the victim. He suggested greater use of expert witnesses to help juries understand why victims might not testify.

He also said Minneapolis upped its successful prosecutions by holding on to cases for the maximum six months, rather than dismissing them or pleading them down, to see if suspects racked up another charge or became nervous enough to plead to charges with higher penalties.

But, he admitted, with prosecutors each handling 300 cases or more at a time, “it’s hard to ask them to spend time on this.”

He also said it might help if police officers press all possible charges, going for the more serious ones when there’s an option, such as kidnapping rather than false imprisonment.

If suspects plead to a domestic violence charge, River said, then they can be ordered to participate in a yearlong batterers intervention program. If they don’t show up for a weekly session, then a bench warrant is issued and they’re back in the system, he said.

“I think a lot of people are going to be surprised by how little people are held accountable on this stuff,” he said of his findings.