Miscellaneous

DWI in New Mexico Just Got Messier

By Anne Skove, Esq.

Alcohol-impaired drivers have long posed problems in New Mexico. The combination of poverty and highway expanse results in a rate of alcohol-involved traffic fatalities that is twice the national average.

One response was to create a system by which misdemeanor DWIs may be filed in state magistrate court rather than in municipal court. (The theory is that magistrate courts are able to mete out harsher sentences.) To do this, local prosecutors are appointed as special state prosecutors.

(If you're confused, refer to the structure of New Mexico courts. Take particular notice of the term "locally funded" in the muni court box.)

Now there's a procedural problem to boot: which court hears DWI cases? Who pays the prosecutors? And who keeps the fines?

Two Las Cruces Municipal Court judges, stressed by having to pay prosecutors for doing state court-level work, want the attorney general to determine:

• Whether city police officers may charge local DWI offenders under state law in magistrate court, or under local DWI ordinances in municipal court?


• Whether the city attorney is pre-empted from implementing anti-DWI initiatives by state legislation and policy promoting the use of municipal courts in DWI cases ?


• Whether state law prohibits deputizing assistant prosecutors as special prosecutors?


• Whether the city attorney may appoint special prosecutors in a city where legislation has already been adopted giving jurisdiction over DWI cases to the municipal court?


• Whether domestic violence cases (these are also part of the special prosecution program) are petty misdemeanors, prosecuted in municipal court, or full misdemeanors, prosecuted in the magistrate court?

Oh, and if you couldn't tell, the judges dislike the city attorney intensely. One was even criticized for calling him a "smart ass".

See Rawson Asks for AG Opinion on Las Cruces Court Spat, Jose L. Medina, Sun-News (April 17, 2008), which includes a handy link to the letter to the AG from a state senator on behalf of the municipal judges.

See also Not-So-Fresh Pursuit, court-o-rama (February 18, 2008).

If any New Mexican lawyers out there can comment/clarify, please do!

Full post as published by court-o-rama.org on April 17, 2008 (boomark / email).