NM high court tosses murder conviction based on allegations of witchcraft

The New Mexico Supreme Court tossed the murder conviction of a Taos woman Thursday and criticized prosecutors for using allegations that she was a “witch” and a “bruja” to obtain guilty verdicts.

Among the findings that troubled justices were insinuations by the prosecutor that Desiree Lensegrav was a “wanna-be witch magic woman” who used menstrual blood to control her husband.

In a unanimous opinion, justices threw out the convictions of first-degree murder, kidnapping and other charges against Lensegrav, 34, and ruled that double jeopardy protections prohibit her retrial.

Lensegrav did not receive a fair trial “because of the outrageous prosecutorial misconduct that pervaded this trial,” Justice Michael E. Vigil wrote for the five-member court. The misconduct was “exacerbated by a lackluster defense” by Lensegrav’s attorney, he wrote.

The opinion said that in opening statements, Assistant District Attorney Cosme Ripol “repeatedly accuses (Lensegrav) of witchcraft, and relies on inflammatory and inadmissible evidence” that deprived her of a fair trial.

Ripol did not immediately respond Thursday to a phone message seeking comment.

Lensegrav was sentenced in 2022 by 8th Judicial District Court Judge Emilio J. Chavez to a minimum of 45 years in prison for her alleged role in the killing of Joseph Morgas of Taos, who went missing in August 2019.

Police had no leads in Morgas’ disappearance for over a year until August 2020, when Lensegrav was stabbed in the neck and back by her husband, Aram Montoya, during a domestic dispute at their Taos home, the opinion said.

Lensegrav was airlifted to the University of New Mexico Hospital, where she told police that Montoya had choked Morgas to death a year earlier during a fight.

Montoya, 43, pleaded guilty in August 2021 to charges of first-degree murder and kidnapping in Morgas’ killing and was sentenced to life in prison, court records show.

Lensegrav also gave police “grim details” about how she and Montoya disposed of Morgas’ body, “including burning, burial, exhumation, decapitation, reburial, crushing the skull,” the opinion said. Morgas’ body was buried and his head was thrown into the Rio Grande.

The prosecution introduced “foul-smelling physical evidence” from the victim’s remains, causing the judge to adjourn the trial early on the second day, the opinion said. The prosecutor told the jury in closing arguments to find Lensegrav guilty “for the stench of death that permeated this courtroom,” it said.

Prosecutors built their case against Lensegrav on Montoya’s statements about his wife’s involvement, the opinion said.

But on the first day of her trial, prosecutors made a last-minute decision to exclude Montoya as a witness, which should have made his statements inadmissible, the opinion said. Montoya’s allegations were admitted at trial through “hearsay statements to the police,” it said.

In his opening statements, the prosecutor exposed the jury to Montoya’s allegations, “including allegations that (Lensegrav) was a ‘witch’ and a ‘bruja’ (a term for ‘witch’ in Spanish) who controlled Montoya through her menstrual blood,” the opinion said.

Ripol also told jurors that a witness would describe that Lensegrav’s eyes turned black with fury and that “he could feel the wind coming out of her” and that Montoya “was like a zombie when he was around her.”

The prosecutor also told jurors that Lensegrav suggested to the witness that “she was a witch and that she would put menstrual blood concoctions into (Montoya’s) food to control him,” the opinion said.

The prosecution’s first witness continued the witchcraft theme. The witness testified that the day of the killing, Lensegrav’s “eyes turned black,” a wind seemed to throw her hair back and “the room became very heavy,” the opinion said.

The witness also testified that Montoya “was a different person when he was around her” and “was on autopilot.”

The prosecutor also told jurors that Morgas “had to be eliminated by this wanna-be witch magic woman,” referring to Lensegrav, the opinion said.

Justices also criticized Lensegrav’s defense attorney for failing to object to “the vast majority of instances of prosecutorial misconduct” that Lensegrav raised on appeal.

“There is absolutely no scenario in which it is acceptable for a prosecutor to accuse a defendant of witchcraft in a twenty-first-century court, as ADA Ripol did in this case,” Vigil wrote in his opinion.