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Journal North: Home | Sports | Opinion | Obits | Entertainment
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Charges Dropped
By Phil Parker
Journal Staff Writer
TAOS — Before addressing the 32 people he'd had arrested for contempt last week — all but one of whom are members of Taos Pueblo — District Judge Sam Sanchez made clear he doesn't abide disturbances in his courtroom.
“I'm going to make some comments, but before I do I want to tell everyone to remain silent,” he said. “I won't tolerate any disruptions. No talking.”
Sanchez sat for several seconds, looking out at the group.
“If you have chewing gum, remove it from your mouth,” he said, before pausing again, and again scanning the group. “If you have cellular phones, make sure they're off.”
Sanchez dropped the contempt charges Monday, but not before he made the case that he was right to send supporters of Dominic Bau to jail last Thursday for contempt of court. They were locked up overnight but were released Friday after the New Mexico Supreme Court granted a motion to stay the judge's order.
In his district courtroom Monday, Sanchez first pointed out that Bau had entered a guilty plea related to charges he raped a 13-year-old relative when he and other family members were in town to attend his grandmother's funeral. He never faced a jury trial, Sanchez said, so when some spectators said aloud in court last week that there wasn't enough evidence against him to send Bau away for 12 years, they weren't appreciating that there didn't need to be evidence — he wasn't on trial.
Sanchez said Bau made his guilty plea partly so he wouldn't face up to 42 years in prison under the original charges. The 12-year sentence, Sanchez said, was the maximum Bau could have gotten under the charges he was facing.
“I didn't then, and don't now, expect you to agree with the sentence or with my decision not to change that sentence,” Sanchez said. “(But) you all became loud and unruly. You began shouting profanities at the victim and the victim's family and at myself.”
Sanchez said he warned Bau's supporters as many as four times that he would hold them in contempt and have them arrested if the hollering didn't cease. He said that at one point he asked aloud whether they were willing to go to jail that day, and the response came back that they were.
“I asked you if you were serious, if you would go to jail, and you said you would,” Sanchez said.
He also addressed why so many were arrested at once.
“It was impossible to tell who was and who was not involved, since all of you were up — walking, yelling and screaming,” Sanchez said.
Sanchez said he warned the group repeatedly because he didn't want anyone to go to jail. But he said he reached a breaking point.
“This is not a football field or a basketball court where you can yell at officials when you think there's been a bad call,” he said.
Then Sanchez reiterated that he didn't want any of Bau's supporters to go to jail. “Because I still do not feel any ill will toward any of you, the charges are dismissed and you are all free to go,” he said.
The group shuffled out quietly, but not before some words from New Mexico Deputy Chief Public Defender David Eisenberg, a Taos Pueblo member himself, who said he would meet with them at the pueblo and explain where they go from here.
The implication was that the matter is far from settled.
“You've already spent a day and night in jail,” Eisenberg told them. “You've been punished and now we have to look at why.”
Pueblo members declined to comment, instead referring the Journal to Eisenberg, who said he didn't know what the next step would be, but that the men and women arrested on Thursday might file a complaint against the court.
Eisenberg wasn't in court at the sentencing when the ruckus broke out, but he said he'd been told events were not as Sanchez described them. “I heard there was perhaps three or four people that were unruly,” he said.
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