Posted on 01/06/2010 12:59:41 AM PST by The Magical Mischief Tour
The state Supreme Court unanimously ruled Tuesday that arrest records of all 32 people that a Taos judge held in contempt of court at a November hearing will be expunged.
Chief Justice Edward Chavez said the court would publish a formal opinion on the case, which would stress that all judges in the state should know that it's important to distinguish between crowd control and contempt proceedings.
All but one of those jailed are members of Taos Pueblo.
The justices came to that conclusion at the end of a hearing on the case of Taos District Judge Sam Sanchez, who ordered the mass jailing of spectators following a hearing in which he denied a request to reconsider the 12-year prison sentence of a convicted rapist.
At Tuesday's hearing David Tourek of the state Attorney General's staff, who was representing Sanchez, told the Supreme Court that the state Judicial Standards Commission is conducting its own investigation into the mass jailings.
Speaking to the justices, Sanchez, a judge for 11 years, apologized for the incident, saying it's possible that he "messed up."
"I apologize," he said. "If I made a mistake, I made a mistake — I'd never seen anything like this."
But Sanchez stuck by his contention that he had to control the crowd, which he said was "yelling and screaming" at him and the rape victim immediately after the Nov. 19 hearing for Dominic Bau, 31, who had pleaded guilty to raping an underage relative at a hotel in 2007.
"I had to do what I had to do," Sanchez said.
"In the heat of the moment, all I could think about was the safety of the victim," Sanchez said.
All 32 people who came to support Bau spent the night in jail and were not freed until the Supreme Court intervened the next afternoon. Sanchez subsequently dropped all charges.
A tape of the proceeding shows that Sanchez ordered the jailings about a minute after he'd announced his decision not to reduce Bau's sentence.
Little actual shouting can be heard on the court tape. Sanchez's attorney pointed out that the microphones used for the recording didn't pick up much of what was going on the court gallery.
Sanchez told the Supreme Court that he had intended to release those he had jailed the next day.
But Justice Charles Daniels pointed out that the Supreme Court heard an emergency request to intervene the next afternoon — a Friday — and that Sanchez had not set a hearing for any of the people he'd ordered jail.
And David Eisenberg, a public defender representing the 32 jailed, said that Sanchez had told a public defender in Taos that he'd planned to release them the following Monday — which meant they would have spent three nights in jail.
Sanchez told the Supreme Court that he ordered the mass arrest after "several people" said, "We'll go to jail," after he first threatened the crowd with incarceration.
But according to an affidavit by Taos District Attorney's Office employee Tomas Trujillo, filed by the attorney general, only one person — a "gentleman sitting near the front row" — shouted that he didn't care and they would go to jail. No such statement can be heard on the tape, though Sanchez clearly is heard saying, "You'll all go? OK, take 'em all. Go on. All of you. Go on to jail."
The time between Sanchez's announcement of his decision not to reconsider Bau's sentence and his order to jail everyone in the courtroom is less than one minute.
The justices, who grilled Sanchez for nearly 15 minutes, were critical of the way Sanchez handled the situation in November. Justice Petra Maes, who worked as a trial judge in Santa Fe for several years, said she didn't understand why Sanchez followed through with his threat to jail the crowd even after everyone had calmed down.
Daniels compared Sanchez's decision to jail everyone for the misbehavior of a few to the sardonic slogan, "Kill them all and let God sort it out."
When Tourek asked the judges a rhetorical question what they would do under similar circumstances, Justice Richard Bosson said, "Not hold everyone in contempt."
Several of those who had been jailed attended Tuesday's hearing. Afterward, a woman who had been jailed told Eisenberg that she still felt humiliated and traumatized by the incident.
Others said they were filling out affidavits for the Judicial Standards Commission investigation of Sanchez. By law, the commission can't comment on investigations unless and until it makes a recommendation to the Supreme Court. The high court has the power to decide on disciplinary actions for judges.
Tiger Woods who?
They think they are Judges or Kings?
You deicide...
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“They think they are Judges or Kings?”
No, they think the are gods, not men. It’s a problem with those in D.C. also.
I didn't know the underage rape victim was in the court room. Why would the crowd be after her?
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