Police: Video shows triple homicide victims being shot (New Mexico)

The Albuquerque Journal ^ | June 4, 2018 | Megan Bennett and Mark Oswald

[CedarDave]

SANTA FE – The New Mexico State Police say they have a major piece of evidence in last week’s triple homicide – a video of the killings as they took place.

After the bodies of Abraham Martinez, 36, April Browne, 42, and Kierin Guillemin, 27, were discovered Wednesday night in a house near the village of Dixon, officers also found a digital video recording system that had been set up with security cameras surrounding and inside the house.

One piece of video, according to a State Police search warrant affidavit, shows that at about 12:30 a.m. last Tuesday, May 29, two armed men entered a bedroom while Guillemin was sitting in a chair, Martinez was asleep underneath covers on the bed and Browne was sitting on the bed.

One of the men, wearing a hat and loose jacket, had a semiautomatic handgun and the other man, in a sweatshirt and with glasses on his head, was armed with a revolver, says the affidavit by Agent Joey Gallegos Sr.

The video shows that Guillemin is shot “immediately” as the men come into the room and the two gunmen “next walk up and shoot April Browne and Abraham Martinez in the head,” Gallegos’ statement says.

The gunmen ransacked drawers “stealing items and suspected drugs,” before shooting each of the three victims once more in the head.

The two men “ransack some more and then leave the room with several items in hand and their handguns,” says Gallegos’ affidavit.

Gallegos wrote that he later determined that the gunmen in the video were John Powell, 34, of Ranchos de Taos, and his brother, Roger Gage, 33, of Arroyo Hondo. Powell and Gage were arrested Friday night in El Prado north of Taos.

[sargon]

Neighbor's had long suspected that drug activity was occurring at the house and even painted "drug house" on the street with an arrow pointing to the house. Officers searching after the deaths found multiple cellular telephones in the residence as well as drug paraphernalia which had what appeared to be heroin residue on them. Two of the three killed had a drug habit.

Wasn't Alcohol Prohibition great?

From 1920 to 1933, Alcohol Prohibition created a black market for that drug, virtually guaranteeing an increase in violent crime, whether organized or otherwise, and all other crimes related to Contraband Law. In addition, "buyers and "users" of the drug experienced elevated health risks for the buyers of the drug dealers' liquid contraband—Americans who were also deemed criminals, of course, and of whom there were countless millions.

Sound familiar?

Ain't Alcohol Drug Prohibition great?

And ain't the ever-expanding Police State necessary to enforce Contraband Law great—replete with its routine exercise of Tyrannical and/or unconstitutional powers?

Recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions have made a total mockery of Fourth Amendment rights by effectively eliminating the meaning of "probable cause" with respect to police conducting warrantless searches of vehicles being operated on public roads.

Oh, a police officer must still have probable cause to perform a warrantless search of such a vehicle—but he or she can literally manufacture it out of thin air. For example, an officer can simply say "I think I smell marijuana" (or crack smoke, for that matter)—whether he or she actually smells anything incriminating or not—and viola: probable cause! That is the state of things, and that is de facto unlimited warrantless search power in such circumstances.

Now there is simply no way that the Constitution can be legitimately construed to grant such unlimited power. It's antithetical to the Constitution's entire purpose for existing—and yet over and over, Supreme Court decisions have "interpreted" that document in such a way as to grant such limitless powers to the federal government as well as all levels of Law Enforcement.

But I digress.

In any event, American nanny-staters who consider themselves "conservative" ostensibly believe in "limited government"—except, of course, when it doesn't suit their Big Government "solutions" for addressing society's problems like drug abuse (which includes the drug alcohol). Their impulses are often well-meaning—and sometimes self-righteous—but their remedies are excessively authoritarian (and unconstitutional when considered in the spirit of that document, IMHO) and, not coincidentally, antithetical to any authentic concept of limited government.

"Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for."—Will Rogers