{"id":36143,"date":"2023-01-24T18:53:40","date_gmt":"2023-01-25T01:53:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-mexico-chief-justice-urges-caution-with-bail-law-reform\/"},"modified":"2023-01-25T01:53:40","modified_gmt":"2023-01-25T01:53:40","slug":"new-mexico-chief-justice-urges-caution-with-bail-law-reform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-mexico-chief-justice-urges-caution-with-bail-law-reform\/","title":{"rendered":"New Mexico chief justice urges caution with bail law reform"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Supreme
Supreme Court Chief Justice C. Shannon Bacon delivers a State of the Judiciary speech to a joint session of the New Mexico Legislature in Santa Fe on Tuesday, Jan. 24. (Morgan Lee\/The Associated Press)<\/span>Morgan Lee<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

SANTA FE \u2013 New Mexico\u2019s top judicial official urged state legislators Tuesday to be cautious and remember the principle of innocence until proven guilty as they consider toughening the state\u2019s bail laws in response to violent crime.<\/p>\n

Supreme Court Chief Justice C. Shannon Bacon delivered a State of the Judiciary speech to a joint session of the New Mexico Legislature \u2013 the first in several years. She outlined efforts to streamline court procedures to keep law enforcement officers in communities and on the streets, as lawmakers grapple with public frustration over violent crime, including a record-setting spate of homicides in Albuquerque.<\/p>\n

She also recalled advances in public safety that came with New Mexico\u2019s overhaul of its pretrial detention system, starting in 2017, to eliminate money-bail and ensure dangerous individuals can be jailed pending trial.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the elimination of money-bail, judges now have the ability to assess dangerousness, something they could not do before,\u201d Bacon said. In Albuquerque and \u201cBernalillo County, this has resulted in the detention of over 3,000 defendants pending trial. Something that could not happen before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and some legislators from both political parties have voiced support for changes that would make it easier to keep certain criminal defendants in jail while awaiting trial. Currently, people charged with a felony can be held without bond only if prosecutors can persuade a judge that no conditions of release would protect the public, or that a defendant is unlikely to appear in court.<\/p>\n

An unsuccessful bill last year would have created a presumption that defendants should be held if they are charged with a serious violent offense, such as crimes involving a firearm.<\/p>\n

But Bacon also cautioned against rash changes to the state bail system, invoking the wrongful 2019 detention of a 17-year-old high school student in a case of mistaken identity that was dismissed after efforts by prosecutors to deny pretrial release.<\/p>\n

\"Supreme
Supreme Court Chief Justice C. Shannon Bacon delivers a State of the Judiciary speech to a joint session of the New Mexico Legislature in Santa Fe on Tuesday, Jan. 24. Bacon urged legislators to be cautious and remember the principle of innocence until proven guilty as they consider toughening the state's bail laws. (Morgan Lee\/The Associated Press)<\/span>Morgan Lee<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cWe must remember why our Constitution protects the rights of every person, including those accused of crime,\u201d Bacon said.<\/p>\n

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth says he doesn\u2019t support a major expansion of pretrial detentions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do think there\u2019s a number of things on the crime front we need to do,\u201d Wirth told The Associated Press. \u201cI don\u2019t support adding new presumptions that I think would result in thousands of people being held that don\u2019t need to be held.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democratic state Rep. Dayan Hochman-Vigil of Albuquerque introduced a bill that would modestly change the way judges assess a defendant\u2019s risk to the community.<\/p>\n

Republicans in the legislative minority are proposing a constitutional amendment that would expand possible pretrial detention without bail to crimes beyond felonies. Another GOP-sponsored bill would revive money bail in limited instances and prohibit state courts from relying on analytic tools to judge the risk of a defendant fleeing justice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018Judges now have the ability to assess dangerousness, something they could not do before\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[138],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-36143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-new-mexico"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36143","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=36143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36143"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=36143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}