Bernalillo County agreed to pay $80,000 to settle IPRA lawsuit related to jail death

Bernalillo County has agreed to pay $80,000 and release video of a jail inmate being fatally injured to settle a lawsuit filed in state district court against the Metropolitan Detention Center over the withholding of public records.

The New Mexico Foundation for Open Government (FOG) filed suit against the Bernalillo County Board of Commissioners and the county’s public records custodian, Jennifer Rodriguez, in July 2024 after the county maintained the video was a law enforcement record, which would have exempted it from release under the state Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA).

The civil action came about after the Albuquerque Journal filed requests under IPRA seeking the video and complaints filed against former MDC Warden Jason Jones, among other records, in 2024.

FOG, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group that advocates for government transparency, based its lawsuit off the Journal IPRA requests.

The footage in question captured a June 2023 incident in which MDC Sgt. Stephen Gabaldon slammed inmate John Sanchez on his head. Sanchez was eventually taken off life support and the state Office of the Medical Investigator ruled his death a homicide, the cause being blunt-force trauma that left him with a brain bleed, a skull fracture and a broken spine and scapula.

Gabaldon was initially placed on paid leave while Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office deputies and MDC investigated the incident. The 2nd Judicial District Attorney’s Office last month said it had not decided whether to file criminal charges against Gabaldon.

MDC Warden Kai Smith said after Sanchez’s death, the jail “moved to separate Sergeant Stephen Gabaldon’s employment with the facility.”

“That effort moved through the disciplinary process while Gabaldon remained on administrative leave. Gabaldon’s employment with Bernalillo County officially ended on Oct. 9, 2024,” Smith said in a statement.

Under the settlement finalized Tuesday, MDC is required within a month to provide the video footage of the inmate’s death and $80,000, which covers statutory damages up to $100 per day for records wrongly withheld, possible damages and attorney fees.

MDC officials declined to comment on the case, which was filed in 2nd Judicial District Court.

Amanda Lavin, attorney and legal director for FOG, said she believes the settlement was slightly less than what FOG believed the case was worth.

“As part of the settlement agreement, the county has not admitted any sort of liability, so there isn’t any sort of agreement from them explicitly that they misapplied the law, but they are acknowledging that they should have turned that video over,” she said.

Lavin said MDC was attempting to use exceptions to avoid turning over the video and other requested documents.

“That whole exemption was designed to create specific exemptions for lapel video, police reports and things like that,” she said. “It wasn’t meant to apply to jail records, so from the beginning, they’re using this exception that wasn’t meant to include records of a jail or another agency that’s not law enforcement.”

A law enforcement agency is able to withhold public records that include visual depictions of great bodily harm or severe violence, unless the person believed to have caused harm is a law enforcement officer.

“MDC wanted it both ways,” Lavin said. “They wanted to say, ‘This is a law enforcement record,’ but ‘Oh, our guards are not law enforcement officers, so we don’t have to give it to you.’”

According to Lavin, the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office sided with the county and the jail and agreed that because the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office conducted a criminal investigation into the altercation and collected the video footage as evidence, it would be considered a law enforcement record.

“That’s why we filed the lawsuit, to rectify the situation because that’s just a misreading of the law,” Lavin said.

As part of the settlement, FOG will dismiss the lawsuit and will not pursue records involving complaints against Jones, the former jail warden.

“We hope that this would be a lesson to other agencies who might want to try and use IPRA in this way to withhold these kinds of records, because the county ultimately paid a lot of money for their noncompliance,” Lavin said.