District judge’s ruling overturned

The New Mexico Supreme Court on Monday overturned a district court judge from Rio Arriba County who vacated the murder conviction of a Medanales man and ordered a retrial because the state was late in responding to the man’s petition for habeas corpus.

While Justice Edward Chávez noted in his written opinion that neither side was blameless in the situation, he was particularly critical in calling First District Judge Sheri Raphaelson’s decision “against logic, reason and impartiality.”

The Supreme Court ordered the petition remanded to the lower court, but assigned to a different judge.

The case concerns Gabriel Quintana, who was convicted in the 2005 first-degree murder of Elisa Apodaca, his estranged wife’s mother, and attempted second-degree murder of his wife, Marisela Quintana.

He confronted the pair when they were in a vehicle outside their residence, told them he wanted to get back together with his wife, then ended up stabbing them both repeatedly.

In November 2009, one month after the Supreme Court affirmed his murder and attempted murder convictions, Gabriel Quintana filed a writ for habeas corpus in district court. Citing a number of reasons, he contended that his defense attorneys were ineffective.

The case was assigned to Raphaelson, and by the time she set a May 26, 2011, hearing, no attorney had filed an appearance representing the interests of the state. The First District Attorney’s Office explained that it had hired Cynthia Hill, who was one of the attorneys representing Quintana in his original trial and had entered an affidavit in this case admitting that her representation of him was ineffective. This created a conflict of interest for the DA’s office.

At the time of the hearing, there apparently was confusion over the DA’s Office believing the Attorney General’s Office was going to respond to Quintana’s petition, and the Attorney General’s Office believing that someone from a different district’s DA’s Office was taking the case.

Learning of the situation, Assistant District Attorney Doug Couleur assured Raphaelson after the hearing that arrangements would be made to have someone handle the case, but the judge “was unimpressed because the District Attorney had to have been aware of the conflict for months, had not filed a response, and no one had appeared at the hearing, despite receiving notice of the hearing,” the higher court’s opinion notes.

Five days after the hearing in which the state was not represented, Raphaelson granted Quintana’s petition, vacating his convictions and ordering a new trial.

Efforts by a special prosecutor to get her to reconsider and hear the state’s response to the petition were unsuccessful. In an Oct. 17, 2011, hearing on that motion, Raphaelson said the DA had not made a showing of “excusable neglect” for the delayed response to the initial petition. “To emphasize her strong disapproval … Judge Raphaelson said that it was not excusable neglect but incompetence on the District Attorney’s part,” according to the Supreme Court’s synopsis.

The state then appealed to the Supreme Court.

“With plenty of blame to go around, we acknowledge that this habeas corpus proceeding was not a model of diligence, cooperation, or fair play,” the court’s opinion said. “Nor was it, however, a case that even remotely warranted a district judge vacating a jury verdict without considering a response from the State and/or conducting an evidentiary hearing.”

The court repeats past urgings that all petitions for habeas corpus be dealt with promptly, but added that the state’s delay in responding “absolutely (did) not” warrant Raphaelson’s reaction. It says she should have considered whether the state’s conduct “reached the point of stubborn resistance to the court’s order that would justify such an extreme sanction.”

The opinion also noted that she granted various time extensions requested by Quintana.

“Although the conduct of the State is not to be commended, we do not find that the State was resisting, much less stubbornly resisting, Judge Raphaelson’s order” for a timely response to Quintana’s petition, the court ruled.