Editorial: N.M. appeals court sets its witness bar too high

The New Mexico Court of Appeals’ expansion of a DWI defendant’s right to confront and cross examine a lab expert delivers a blow to efforts to combat DWI in New Mexico and puts more innocent lives at risk.

Judges Michael Vigil and Michael Bustamante joined Chief Judge Roderick Kennedy in rejecting a San Juan County trial court decision to allow a lab analyst from the State Laboratory Division to testify about blood results via a two-way video conference.

The court concluded the two-way communication falls short of the standard for a defendant to be able to confront and cross examine a witness.

In the fifth-largest state in the nation, with vast distances and limited resources, and where just 10 state lab analysts handle thousands of drunken-driving tests for 32 counties every year, the ruling is a huge setback for justice and public safety and removes a tool to address in a fair and equitable manner one of the most prevalent crimes in the state.

It does not involve having an eyewitness phone it in.

Yet the judges concluded that the constitutional right to confront a witness always means an in-person face-to-face and any departure must be to further an important public policy.

But here’s an important public policy for the state Supreme Court to consider as it reviews the case: How about efficiently adjudicating DWI cases in a state that had someone killed by a drunken driver every 2.3 days last year?

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.