Santa Fe Judge Accused of Altered Records in DWI Cases Responds
Associated Press
SANTA FE — A Santa Fe judge accused of altering records of people convicted of drunken driving has issued a formal statement repeating what she said earlier — that she fixed clerical errors and wants the state Judicial Standards Commission to look into the allegations.
Municipal Judge Frances Gallegos, in a statement Tuesday, said she amended records sent to the state Motor Vehicle Division to correct sentencing information "clerks had not reported accurately.''
"I never altered the judgment and sentencing from which this data was retrieved,'' her statement said. "The purpose of the amended abstracts was to correct the clerical errors that resulted in specific information not accurately reported'' to the MVD.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reported Sunday that a former court employee accused Gallegos of altering records of driving-while-intoxicated cases after she was criticized for giving no jail time to many of Santa Fe's worst drunken drivers.
Jim Noel, commission director, has said he could not comment on matters that might come before the commission. Commission investigations into judicial conduct are secret until it issues findings.
The review of DWI records involved various members of Gallegos' staff and began last year after the DWI Resource Center in Albuquerque issued a report questioning her sentences for people convicted of DWI, the newspaper reported.
"I really think she was trying to make like she was tough on DWIs by putting in jail time,'' said Jeremy Hanika, a former administrative assistant to the court clerk. "I mean, we started the project the very next day after the report came out.''
At the time, Gallegos said she was sentencing people to jail, but clerks had not been writing the sentences on reports to the MVD.
Gallegos ordered her clerks to pull every DWI case she had ever handled, then she retroactively reported missing jail-sentence information.
According to a review by the newspaper, some documents show that the retroactive reports — specifically sentences and the time defendants actually spent in jail — often did not match the original reports.
Gallegos said in her statement that the clerk's office historically "omitted transmitting accurate and complete information regarding the following: actual jail time spent, jail time for which offenders received credit, jail time which was suspended or deferred, and jail time which was served by electronic monitoring.'' She said fines, fees and "other court restraints'' also weren't reported.
"Following the recommendation from staff at the Motor Vehicle Division, the amended abstracts were a simple procedure meant to clean up this oversight and to track data accurately and completely that up until this time had not been transmitted by the court clerk,'' she said.
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