{"id":136642,"date":"2016-03-17T09:41:22","date_gmt":"2016-03-17T15:41:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=136642"},"modified":"2016-03-18T08:08:03","modified_gmt":"2016-03-18T14:08:03","slug":"this-attorney-defended-duran-and-others-charged-with-corruption-heres-what-shes-learned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2016\/03\/this-attorney-defended-duran-and-others-charged-with-corruption-heres-what-shes-learned\/","title":{"rendered":"This attorney defended Duran and others charged with corruption. Here’s what she’s learned."},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Erlinda

Heath Haussamen \/ NMPolitics.net<\/p>

Albuquerque attorney Erlinda Ocampo Johnson has represented several defendants\u00a0in public corruption cases, most recently former Secretary of State Dianna Duran.<\/p><\/div>\n

Erlinda Ocampo Johnson doesn\u2019t believe former Secretary of State Dianna Duran is a bad person.<\/p>\n

Johnson, an Albuquerque attorney<\/a>, represented Duran in the recent criminal case that led to Duran resigning from office and pleading guilty to two felonies<\/a>. Johnson says there were weaknesses in the attorney general\u2019s case. She believes she might have been able to successfully defend Duran against the charges.<\/p>\n

Duran didn\u2019t want that.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I found so unique about Dianna, she didn\u2019t want to go there,\u201d Johnson said during a recent interview. \u201cShe recognized what she did and that it was a horrible mistake, it was wrong, and she just wanted to accept responsibility and move on with her life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson has represented defendants in several high-profile public corruption cases in New Mexico in recent years. Based on her unique experience, NMPolitics.net sat down with Johnson to get her thoughts on government corruption. One thing she says she\u2019s learned: We\u2019re all capable of making mistakes. Various circumstances lead officials to violate the public trust. Rather than lumping all politicians in together and assuming they\u2019re bad, we should treat each as an individual.<\/p>\n

Duran, for example, suffered from a gambling addiction. She stole money from her campaign accounts to keep her personal bank account in the black.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsent that issue I am confident she would never have done what she did,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cI just thank the Lord that I\u2019ve never had an addiction. When people fall into the throes of addiction, they make decisions that would be absolutely uncharacteristic of who they are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson comes from an immigrant family. She mentioned immigrants as another population of people living in the United States who deserve to be treated as individuals rather than being stereotyped as criminals.<\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s family fled civil war in Nicaragua when she was nine years old. She came to the United States as a refugee, settling near Santa Fe, and later became a citizen.<\/p>\n

Her parents didn\u2019t speak English. Her father, who had been a banker in Nicaragua, initially did manual labor to make ends meet. He eventually found work as a bookkeeper. Her mother earned a nursing certificate.<\/p>\n

After Johnson earned her law degree from the University of New Mexico, she worked as a state and federal prosecutor for 11 years. When her daughter was born, she opened her own practice and switched to criminal defense. Public corruption and immigration are among her focus areas.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people were surprised that I went to do criminal defense,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cI was hard-core.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy zeal transferred,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Her first work on a public corruption case was representing Dennis Kennedy, an accountant who was caught up in the housing authority scandal that exploded a decade ago. The case centered on the misuse of millions of dollars in bond money that was supposed to pay for affordable housing.<\/p>\n

The primary defendant in that case, Vincent \u201cSmiley\u201d Gallegos, pleaded guilty to a handful of misdemeanors<\/a>. Charges against Kennedy and others were eventually dropped<\/a>, though Johnson had already stopped representing Kennedy at that point.<\/p>\n

Johnson later represented Elizabeth \u201cDaisy\u201d Kupfer, who was sentenced in 2013 to three years in federal prison<\/a> for tax evasion related to the misuse of millions of dollars in federal Help America Vote Act funds during the administration of former Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron. A separate state-level case against Kupfer was dismissed.<\/p>\n

Johnson also represented Toby Martinez in the notorious case of the theft of millions of public dollars during construction of the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Courthouse. Martinez was sentenced to 5.5 years in federal prison<\/a> in 2009 and ordered to pay $2.7 million in restitution for his role the theft.<\/p>\n

And now Johnson represents Duran. Most recently, Johnson filed \u2013 and then withdrew<\/a> \u2013 a motion asking a\u00a0judge to reconsider Duran\u2019s sentence. Duran has already served her court-ordered jail time of 30 days<\/a> but was briefly contesting a requirement that she speak publicly about her crimes four times each month.<\/p>\n

Johnson, in her interview and in the motion she eventually withdrew, expressed concern about vitriol directed at Duran on social media. Public speaking could threaten Duran\u2019s life<\/a>, her attorney argued in the motion. Johnson\u00a0told NMPolitics.net she wants people to understand that Duran has taken responsibility for her actions and see that she\u2019s different than some other defendants.<\/p>\n

Johnson speaks with compassion about Duran. While she wouldn\u2019t go into details, she said Duran and her husband, who have full custody of three grandchildren, were under stress because of a custody issue and \u201csome very tragic circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe wants nothing more than to just raise these little kids and be there for them,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cShe goes to every single one of their games, to every single one of their school events. She\u2019s essentially their mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

The stress helped lead to Duran\u2019s gambling addiction, Johnson said. \u201cNone of us is beyond making mistakes,\u201d she reiterated.<\/p>\n

Johnson comes across as an upbeat and optimistic person. She\u2019s been doing criminal defense work for nine years, and she said it\u2019s taught her to \u201cevaluate people individually and treat them as human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other defendants she\u2019s represented \u2013 including those charged with public corruption crimes \u2013 have their own stories and were also dealing with unique circumstances, Johnson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly, I don\u2019t think I have ever represented someone I could say, \u2018Oh my God, this person is really bad.\u2019 I think there is always an unfortunate circumstance behind why somebody gets involved\u201d in crime, Johnson said.<\/p>\n

Johnson also believes it\u2019s unfair to treat all politicians as corrupt because of the actions of a few. Judges are required to evaluate each defendant individually. She urged the public to do the same with government officials.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have some very good politicians, some very honorable politicians,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Erlinda Ocampo Johnson doesn\u2019t believe former Secretary of State Dianna Duran is a bad person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":136646,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[142,3274,152,114,107],"class_list":["post-136642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-crime","tag-dianna","tag-housing-authority-scandal","tag-public-corruption","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}