{"id":21942,"date":"2025-06-05T21:27:14","date_gmt":"2025-06-06T03:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/jury-trial-vacated-bench-trial-set-in-former-da-case\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:10:38","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:10:38","slug":"jury-trial-vacated-bench-trial-set-in-former-da-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/jury-trial-vacated-bench-trial-set-in-former-da-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Jury trial vacated, bench trial set in former DA case"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A district court judge has vacated the jury trial in the drunken driving case of former Montezuma County District Attorney Christian Hatfield.<\/p>\n

Eleventh Judicial District Court Judge David R. Pederson recently ordered a bench trial at 1 p.m. Sept. 17, after denying a defense motion to dismiss.<\/p>\n

\"Christian
Christian Hatfield<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

There also is a new special prosecutor on the case \u2013 John Lovelace, an assistant district attorney out of Cibola County. He replaced Special Prosecutor Stephanie Story.<\/p>\n

Defense Attorney Arlon Stoker said Judge Pederson changed it from a jury to a bench trial of his \u201cown volition.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody requested a jury trial, so he set it as a bench trial,\u201d Stoker said, adding he believes it\u2019s because \u201cthere are so many issues in that case he didn\u2019t want to bring in a jury and waste their time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hatfield, 59, faces two petty misdemeanor charges: driving while under the influence of liquor and possessing an open container.<\/p>\n

Most petty misdemeanor cases are filed in magistrate court, not district court, according to Stoker. \u201cWhen I was chief deputy DA, I would have stamped decline on it and posted it out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hatfield\u2019s charges stem from a single-vehicle crash about 1 a.m. Aug. 30 near the intersection of U.S. Highway 64 and County Road 5099. Hatfield was driving alone with his dog.<\/p>\n

\"Christian
Christian Hatfield, 59, after an alleged DWI crash on Aug. 30 on U.S. Highway 64 outside of Bloomfield.<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

According to the police report, investigators found \u201can open 12-ounce can of Mexican Lager with residual liquid inside,\u201d an \u201cempty wine glass,\u201d and a \u201cbottle of Ambien prescribed to Christian.\u201d<\/p>\n

There also was a pungent odor of alcohol coming from Hatfield, according to officers who responded to the accident.<\/p>\n

However, Hatfield was unable to submit to a field sobriety test because of injuries he sustained in the crash, and a blood draw to measure alcohol content in his system was not done until 11 hours after the crash.<\/p>\n

By that time, Hatfield was treated by doctors with chemical substances including fentanyl, Midazolam and Zolpidem,\u201d which are \u201cnarcotics and hypnotics\u201d that affect \u201cthe metabolism of alcohol,\u201d Stoker said in a motion to suppress the evidence, which was granted by Pederson.<\/p>\n

This means the blood sample, which showed 0.05 g\/100 ml of Ethanol and 0.04 mg\/L of Zolpidem (Ambien) in Hatfield\u2019s system will not be admissible at trial.<\/p>\n

Pederson gave a motions deadline of June 9, a pretrial conference at 8:30 a.m. July 7, a final pretrial conference at 8:30 a.m. Aug. 18.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

special prosecutor makes appearance in Hatfield case<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16494,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-21942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21942"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77517,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21942\/revisions\/77517"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21942"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=21942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}