Concha v. Sanchez

• Decision Date: 19 July 2011
• Docket Number: No. 32,080.,32,080.
• Citation: 150 N.M. 268,2011 -NMSC- 031,258 P.3d 1060
• Parties: Lynette CONCHA, et al., Petitioners,v.Hon. Sam B. SANCHEZ, District Court Judge, Eighth Judicial District, Respondent,andState of New Mexico, Real Party in Interest.
• Court: New Mexico Supreme Court

150 N.M. 268

258 P.3d 1060

2011 -NMSC- 031

Lynette CONCHA, et al., Petitioners,

v.Hon. Sam B. SANCHEZ, District Court Judge, Eighth Judicial District, Respondent,andState of New Mexico, Real Party in Interest.

No. 32,080.

Supreme Court of New Mexico.

July 19, 2011.

Jacqueline Cooper, Chief Public Defender, Nancy M. Hewitt, Appellate Defender, T. David Eisenberg, Deputy Public Defender, David A. Bouchard, Deputy Public Defender, Santa Fe, NM, for Petitioners.Gary K. King, Attorney General, David Tourek, Assistant Attorney General, Santa Fe, NM, for Respondent and Real Party in Interest.

OPINION

DANIELS, Chief Justice.

{1} The extraordinary contempt powers of our courts often require judges to accommodate important, but potentially conflicting, obligations. Judges must take reasonable and necessary steps to maintain the order and safety of our court processes. At the same time, they must comply with fundamental principles of our constitutional system of due process of law to ensure that the judiciary itself does not act lawlessly in the course of enforcing the law. In this Opinion, we address how each of those important obligations should be honored without sacrificing the others.

I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

{2} This case came before us on a petition invoking our emergency original jurisdiction to review the indefinite detention of thirty-two courtroom spectators who had all been summarily ordered to jail for contempt of court by Respondent after a contentious hearing evolved into a courtroom disruption created by some, but not all, of the Petitioners.

{3} The underlying hearing related to a criminal case in which a defendant had entered guilty pleas to criminal sexual penetration and criminal sexual contact of a minor, his thirteen-year-old niece. Respondent had sentenced the defendant to six years of imprisonment on each of the two counts, to be served consecutively.

{4} On the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 2009, Respondent heard the defendant's motion for sentence reduction. On the north side of the courtroom's large gallery sat the victim, accompanied by her mother, step-father, grandparents, and a victims' advocate from the district attorney's office. On the east side of the gallery sat Petitioners, many of whom apparently supported a reduced sentence for the defendant. All but one of the Petitioners, who ranged in age from twenty-two to seventy-one years old, were members of Taos Pueblo. The other Petitioner was the defendant's employer. The court had two bailiffs present, and several employees of the district attorney's office also attended the hearing to provide additional security in light of the tensions that existed between the victim's family and the defendant's friends and family.

{5} During the reconsideration hearing, four people spoke in support of the defendant's request for a sentence reduction. Three of the victim's family members also spoke and urged Respondent to uphold the sentence. The courtroom remained orderly throughout the witnesses' presentations. At the end of the hearing, Respondent denied the motion to reduce the sentence, emphasizing that the defendant “[was] the adult in this situation,” had “destroyed a lot of families,” and was “the one to blame” for what had happened. Respondent concluded the hearing by stating that the court was in recess.

{6} The events that took place immediately after Respondent recessed the court were preserved in a digital audio recording and supplemented by accounts of some of the persons present. Four seconds after the bailiff announced, “All rise,” Respondent, who had left the bench but was still in the courtroom, said, “I want everyone on this side to remain seated,” apparently referring to the area in which Petitioners were standing. The defendant responded by saying, “This has all been one sided,” and murmurs from unidentified members of the crowd indicated that some of them agreed. Respondent ordered the bailiff to remove the defendant from the courtroom.

{7} At that point, the noise level in the courtroom increased as the voices of the defendant and some of the spectators became louder. Unidentified voices shouted messages of support to the defendant, such as “We love you,” and “Bye.” Derogatory statements about the victim and her family were also made, including “she's no virgin,” her “grandfather's a rapist,” and a reference to “a little whore and a bunch of liars.” As the defendant was being led out of the building, the noisy exchange between opposing sides of the courtroom continued in both English and Tiwa, the traditional Taos Pueblo language. The victim and her family were safely escorted through a locked jury room to their car.

{8} Thirty-nine seconds after the bailiff first told the crowd to rise and while audible statements were still being made, Respondent yelled, “That's enough-I'll hold every one of you in contempt and jail you all!” Although the noise level in the courtroom immediately dropped dramatically, an unidentified voice could be heard saying, “We'll all go.” According to an employee of the district attorney's office who was present at the hearing, “[a] gentleman sitting near the front row shouted that he didn't care and they would go to jail.” Respondent, who represented at oral argument before this Court that there were “several” unidentified people who stated that they would go to jail, yelled, “You'll all go? Okay, take them all. Go on, all of you, go on to jail!” Respondent asked that the sheriff be called immediately to provide further assistance.

{9} Moments after Respondent ordered Petitioners to “go on to jail,” members of the Taos County Sheriff's Department, Taos Police Department, and New Mexico State Police began to arrive. The officers advised the east gallery spectators that they would be booked and jailed. Respondent left the courtroom and allowed the police officers to process Petitioners, which apparently took place without further incident. One Petitioner was taken to the hospital to be examined for an unrelated health condition. Four of the more elderly Petitioners were incarcerated at the Taos Pueblo jail. Because there was room for only seven Petitioners at the Taos County jail, all of those not locked up in the two Taos area jails were transported to Santa Fe by bus and booked into the Santa Fe County Detention Center.

{10} The persons arrested were the spectators who had been in the east side of the public area of the courtroom where the defendant's family, friends, and employer were seated. Without any further hearing or fact-finding process, Respondent entered thirty-two identical two-sentence orders that facially adjudicated each Petitioner guilty of direct criminal contempt:

IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that [name] is held in direct contempt of court for misconduct during a hearing in State of New Mexico v. Dominic Bau, CR–2008–0004 on November 19, 2009. Defendant to be held until further order of the Court.

The orders contained no individualized allegations or findings concerning any individual Petitioner's conduct, no provisions for bond or other conditions of release, no specific sentences, and no settings for any future hearings. The jails were, in effect, ordered to incarcerate each Petitioner until and unless the court issued a future order to the contrary.

{11} After Respondent summarily ordered Petitioners to jail on Thursday, there was no hearing of any kind held or even scheduled on either Thursday or Friday. Petitioners secured the assistance of counsel, who learned from the court clerk that the only setting in the case was an “arraignment” scheduled for the following Monday at 4 p.m., meaning that Petitioners would have to remain locked in jail without bond for at least four days and nights before having any opportunity to be heard on any issue.

{12} On the next day, Friday afternoon, Petitioners filed a petition for emergency writ of prohibition or superintending control in this Court, seeking relief from the contempt orders. Late that afternoon, this Court issued a stay of the proceedings against Petitioners, ordered their immediate release from custody, and ordered them to appear before Respondent for the purported “arraignment” hearing on Monday afternoon, November 23.

{13} At the November 23 district court hearing, instead of conducting arraignments or any further proceedings in the thirty-two contempt cases, Respondent orally announced to Petitioners and their counsel that he was dismissing all contempt proceedings. On the following day he entered a single order, naming all Petitioners as codefendants in a single case, that was as brief and uninformative as the original separate charging orders:

“THIS MATTER having come before this Court on the 23rd of November, 2009, for Arraignment.

IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED that this matter is hereby dismissed with prejudice.”

{14} On November 30, Respondent filed in this Court a cursory response to the pending petition for extraordinary relief that did not respond to either the factual or legal allegations in the petition, but instead took the position that “the remaining relief sought in the Petition has become moot” as a result of Respondent's intervening order dismissing the contempt “matter.”

{15} On December 4, we entered an order stating that “this Court d[id] not consider th[e] matter moot” and instructing Respondent “to respond to the questions raised in the petition concerning the appropriateness of contempt and, more generally, the appropriate procedure for a judge to follow when considering contempt for unruly behavior in a courtroom and whether [Respondent] followed that procedure in this case.”

{16} In his filed response to our December 4 order, Respondent took the position that he had used contempt sanctions against all Petitioners, whether guilty or innocent of misconduct, in order to protect the safety of all courtroom occupants and to regain control of the courtroom:

While it may be true that a...