Judge in New Mexico Resigns
Dr. Kardasz -
Read the following report and consider:
1. Which typology of unethical behavior was exhibited by the accused?
2. Which decision making process might have prevented the accused from making the wrong decision?
Typologies of unethical behavior - http://kardasz.org/CorruptionTypologies.html
Decision making processes - http://kardasz.org/Decision_Making_Tools.html
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By Jason Auslande, The New Mexican, May 20, 2006
Santa Fe, New Mexico
A special prosecutor filed charges Friday in District Court accusing former Municipal Judge Frances Gallegos of 12 counts of felony records tampering.
According to the criminal-information document, Gallegos, 56, knowingly falsified the records of 12 Municipal Court defendants between June 2, 2004, and April 21, 2005. Each count is a fourth-degree felony punishable by up to 18 months in prison.
The charges were filed Friday afternoon in First Judicial District Court by Timothy Hasson, deputy district attorney for the Eighth Judicial District in Taos. Hasson is acting as special prosecutor for the First Judicial District, which asked the Taos office to prosecute the Gallegos case because of a conflict of interest.
Eighth Judicial District Attorney Donald Gallegos said earlier Friday that the filing of the criminal-information document means a preliminary hearing will be held in Santa Fe. The hearing had not been scheduled as of Friday afternoon.
At a preliminary hearing, prosecutors lay out their evidence against a defendant and call witnesses, who can be cross-examined by the defendant's attorney. A judge then decides whether the evidence supports the charge and either binds the matter over for trial or dismisses it.
Efforts to reach Frances Gallegos; her attorney, Jeffrey Jones; and Donald Gallegos were unsuccessful after the criminal-information document was filed late Friday afternoon. Donald Gallegos and Frances Gallegos are not related.
The New Mexico Supreme Court suspended Frances Gallegos for 90 days with pay in August while the state Judicial Standards Commission investigated two sets of misconduct allegations against her. The first set alleged she didn't let defendants not represented by an attorney plead not guilty, conducted summary trials and engaged in professional incompetence. The second set alleged she increased jail time on closed driving-while-intoxicated cases to enhance her standing with the public.
Gallegos resigned from the bench Nov. 3, the day a state police investigator filed three counts of felony records tampering against her in Santa Fe County Magistrate Court.
The charges filed Friday relate directly to the second set of misconduct allegations concerning altering the outcome of closed DWI cases. Three of the 12 counts were for the same three DWI cases cited by the state police investigator who filed the Magistrate Court charges in November.
Those three cases were first detailed in a supplemental petition from the Judicial Standards Commission asking that Gallegos be temporarily suspended, which was filed Aug. 23 in the Supreme Court.
In that filing, the commission said it felt the need to supplement its original petition asking that Gallegos be temporarily suspended because it had reviewed more of the approximately 950 cases she allegedly altered and had found "further and more serious code violations, as well as possible violations of New Mexico statutes." according to the document.
In the first case detailed by the commission -- which is also Count 1 of the charges filed Friday in District Court -- a Texas man was found not guilty of DWI in 1999 by Gallegos' pro tem judge, Gail Glasser, according to documents. But when Gallegos filed an undated amendment on the case with the Department of Motor Vehicles, she indicated Glasser had dismissed the case and imposed a 90-day jail sentence with two days served and 88 days suspended, the documents state.
In the second case detailed by the commission -- Count 2 of the charges filed Friday -- the 1995 DWI case against a Santa Fe woman was dismissed in November 1997 because the six-month time limit to prosecute it had passed, according to the documents.
However, Gallegos amended the case Dec. 17, 2004, to say that while the case had been dismissed, the defendant had been sentenced to 90 days in jail, credited with two days served and 88 days suspended, the documents state.
In the third case detailed by the commission -- Count 3 of the charges filed Friday -- then-Municipal Judge Tom Fiorina dismissed a 1995 DWI charge against a Santa Fe man on Sept. 7, 1995.
The amendment filed Dec. 16, 2004, by Gallegos indicated that while Fiorina dismissed the case, the defendant was given a 90-day jail sentence, credited with two days served and 88 days suspended.
According to the standards commission, all three actions by Gallegos constituted a "material change" to the case dispositions from "dismissed" to the imposition of jail time.
According to a statement by the standards commission's executive director, Jim Noel, in the supplemental petition:
"As discussed in the commission's original filing, it is alleged Judge Gallegos was substantively changing criminal-case dispositions, to wit, changing the number of days a defendant was sentenced in order to enhance her standing as 'tough' on DWI convictions. However, these new documents represent a much more serious violation of the code (and likely the law) in that Judge Gallegos amended dismissed case dispositions (some of which pre-date her election to office) to reflect the imposition of what appear to be fabricated sentences."
Contact Jason Auslander at 995-3877 or jauslander@sfnewmexican.com.
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