{"id":23391,"date":"2025-02-25T16:27:46","date_gmt":"2025-02-25T23:27:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/former-da-hatfield-pleads-not-guilty-to-drunken-driving-charge\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:35:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:35:08","slug":"former-da-hatfield-pleads-not-guilty-to-drunken-driving-charge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/former-da-hatfield-pleads-not-guilty-to-drunken-driving-charge\/","title":{"rendered":"Former DA Hatfield pleads \u2018not guilty\u2019 to drunken driving charge"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

Former Montezuma County District Attorney Christian Hatfield waived his formal arraignment and entered a plea of not guilty during a Feb. 24 status hearing in the 11th Judicial District Court.<\/p>\n

District Judge R. David Pederson also set the case for a jury trial at 9 a.m. July 22.<\/p>\n

Hatfield is charged with DWI and possessing an open container, both petty misdemeanors, in connection to an Aug. 30, 2024, accident on U.S. 64.<\/p>\n

Hatfield was in a single-vehicle crash about 1 a.m. Aug. 30, 2024, on U.S. Highway 64 near County Road 5099 in Bloomfield, according to accident reports.<\/p>\n

Hatfield \u201cwas seriously injured in the accident,\u201d according to a motion to suppress evidence filed by Defense Attorney Arlon Stoker, who stated that his client was transported by ambulance to San Juan Regional Medical Center.<\/p>\n

The San Juan County Sheriff\u2019s Office investigated the crash, and deputy Avery Killifer requested a search warrant to draw Hatfield\u2019s blood.<\/p>\n

In the warrant signed by Magistrate Russell Bradford, Killifer wrote Hatfield was \u201cunconscious\u201d and unable to give consent, and that he had an \u201codor of an alcoholic beverage,\u201d had \u201cblood shot\/watery eyes,\u201d a \u201clack of dexterity\u201d and an \u201copen container in driver\u2019s possession.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

A report from the New Mexico State Police states there was \u201can alcoholic beverage located on the front right passenger floorboard labeled Mexican lager,\u201d and there was a \u201cpill bottle with several pills inside next to this open container.\u201d It was labeled Ambien and was prescribed to Hatfield.<\/p>\n

Hatfield\u2019s blood was drawn at 11:12 a.m. Aug. 30, 2024, more than \u201c10 hours after the accident,\u201d the motion states.<\/p>\n

The sample \u201chad been sitting in a fridge\u201d at the San Juan County Sheriff\u2019s Office until Oct. 3, 2024, when it was discovered by the evidence custodian, who asked in an email that it be mailed to the New Mexico Health Department for testing. The email from Elijah Montoya was obtained through an Inspection of Public Records Act request.<\/p>\n

The health department lab received the blood Oct. 11, and began testing it. The department on Dec. 9, 2024, concluded testing and sent the results to the San Juan County Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n

Testing showed that there \u201cwere 0.05 g\/100 ml of Ethanol and 0.04 mg\/L of Zolpidem (Ambien),\u201d in Hatfield\u2019s system 11 hours after the accident, and that \u201cboth Ethanol and Ambien are Central Nervous System Depressants.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stoker has moved to suppress this evidence stating that it was illegally obtained under New Mexico law, because blood draw warrants can only be approved by a judge when the alleged drunken driver is being charged with felony or has caused great bodily harm to another individual, Stoker said.<\/p>\n

Hatfield was charged with a petty misdemeanor and no one, other than himself was injured.<\/p>\n

The next pretrial conference will be at 9 a.m. March 17 in front of District Judge Pederson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

jury trial for July 22<\/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],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-23391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23391","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=23391"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78096,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23391\/revisions\/78096"}],"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=23391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23391"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=23391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}