![\"The](\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/3rdDistrictCourt2-336x233.jpg\")
Heath Haussamen \/ NMPolitics.net<\/p>
The Third Judicial District Courthouse in Las Cruces.<\/p><\/div>\n
And Dickens claims the Third Judicial District Attorney\u2019s Office under D\u2019Antonio\u2019s watch is pleading out and dismissing too many cases. But the stats are complicated. Dickens and the DA\u2019s Office have released dramatically different numbers they say came from the same case management system.<\/p>\n
The reason for the discrepancy isn\u2019t clear \u2013 and even if it was, interpreting the stats is somewhat subjective.<\/p>\n
To further complicate things, there are ethical questions about how Dickens accessed stats.<\/p>\n
Attacks aside, one notable fact that sets the candidates apart is Dickens\u2019 massive fundraising lead. As of May 9 he had outraised D\u2019Antonio nearly 4-1.<\/p>\n
D\u2019Antonio had collected just under $5,300<\/a>, which included a $1,500 contribution from himself, as of May 9. His campaign filed his most recent report three days late, on May 12. That could result in a fine of $50 per day the report was late, should the Secretary of State\u2019s Office choose to assess the fine.<\/p>\n Dickens, meanwhile, had raised just over $21,000<\/a>, according to his most recent finance report \u2013 which was filed on time. Dickens\u2019 donors include several people who worked in the DA\u2019s office under previous Republican district attorneys Susana Martinez and Amy Orlando.<\/p>\n Dickens worked in the office during the tenures of both Republicans. He was chief deputy district attorney for Orlando, who Martinez appointed to replace her as district attorney when she became governor in 2011.<\/p>\n D\u2019Antonio unseated Orlando a year later. Dickens left the office to become a prosecutor in the nearby 12th Judicial District based in Alamogordo.<\/p>\n Dickens credits his fundraising success not to his connections, but to his door-to-door campaigning and the poor job he says D\u2019Antonio has done. \u201cThey know Mr. D\u2019Antonio and they see how he\u2019s running the office,\u201d Dickens said. \u201cSo people are reaching to someone who has more experience.\u201d<\/p>\n D\u2019Antonio said fundraising won\u2019t determine the outcome of the race. \u201cAmy Orlando and the governor outspent me 3-1 last time,\u201d D\u2019Antonio said. \u201cPeople know who\u2019s right and who\u2019s wrong. I have no fear; I\u2019m working hard and have no doubt of the outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n The fundraising appears to point to a difference between how the two candidates believe the DA\u2019s Office should function. Central to Dickens\u2019 campaign is the theme that D\u2019Antonio isn\u2019t winning enough cases \u2013 and some experienced former prosecutors are backing Dickens with their money. D\u2019Antonio, on the other hand, says stats don\u2019t account for his care for the people involved in each case \u2013 such as a victim who didn\u2019t want to testify, which he says led his office to drop charges.<\/p>\n Dickens\u2019 claims are based in part on statistics he compiled by accessing an internal database of case information from all state district attorney\u2019s offices. He has access because of his job with the 12th Judicial DA\u2019s Office. He says the numbers show that too many cases \u2013 46 percent \u2013 didn\u2019t lead to convictions or were pleaded out to lesser charges since D\u2019Antonio took office on Jan. 1, 2013.<\/p>\n That includes cases the office declined to prosecute, that prosecutors dismissed after filing charges, that were dismissed by judges and juries, and in which some charges were dismissed as part of a plea bargain.<\/p>\n Courtesy photo<\/p> Mark D’Antonio<\/p><\/div>\n Dickens says he checked the internal numbers after hearing from law enforcement officers in Do\u00f1a Ana County \u201cthat too many of their cases were declined or dismissed.\u201d He also says a high number of plea bargains has resulted in less-severe sentences for defendants and fewer trials.<\/p>\n Dickens also cited statistics from the state Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC)<\/a> \u2013 numbers that come from the courts themselves, not the prosecutors\u2019 offices \u2013 that show in 2015 some 51 district court cases were resolved at trial in Do\u00f1a Ana County. In the 12th District, meanwhile, Dickens said prosecutors took 72 cases to trial with fewer than half the attorneys working in D\u2019Antonio\u2019s office. And in the 5th District in Eastern New Mexico, which Dickens said has a similar number of attorneys to D\u2019Antonio\u2019s office, prosecutors took 191 cases to trial.<\/p>\n \u201cIt seems that the culture of the office is to avoid trial,\u201d Dickens said. \u201c\u2026If you let the other party know that you are afraid to go forward, well then you\u2019re going to settle the case with the smallest amount.\u201d<\/p>\n Dickens\u2019 claim doesn\u2019t account for the particulars of individual cases, including what victims want, D\u2019Antonio countered.<\/p>\n \u201c[Dickens] doesn\u2019t know that a victim on a case thanked me not to put her on the stand. Sometimes we make pleas because the victims don\u2019t want to go to trial and are afraid of retaliation,\u201d D\u2019Antonio said. \u201cAcross the country 96 percent of cases are plead. Why? Because there is a certainty and finality in a plea.\u201d<\/p>\n Courtesy photo<\/p> James Dickens<\/p><\/div>\n The AOC stats may point to a wider trend rather than an issue in D\u2019Antonio\u2019s office. While the number of cases dismissed by prosecutors rose dramatically in the Third District between the 2013 and 2014 fiscal years \u2013 from 442 to 1,176, according to an AOC report \u2013 similar jumps happened in some other judicial districts around the state \u2013 including the 12th, where Dickens works. There, dismissals rose from 178 to 407 during the same time period. In the Second District, which serves Bernalillo County, dismissals increased from 2,722 in 2013 to 4,769 in 2014.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s difficult to compare stats. Measuring the AOC stats against how individual DA\u2019s offices classify their cases can\u2019t be accurately done, according to AOC spokesman Barry Massey and Patrick Hayes, spokesman for D\u2019Antonio\u2019s office.<\/p>\n One reason: There was a muddying of how cases were categorized internally in the DA\u2019s Office when Orlando and Martinez were in charge, Hayes said. Before 2013, he said, some cases were recorded as having been declined for prosecution \u2013 without charges ever being filed by the DA\u2019s office \u2013 when the cases had actually been accepted for prosecution and later dismissed.<\/p>\n The cases are recorded accurately today, Hayes\u00a0said.<\/p>\n As if that wasn\u2019t complicated enough, different sources are accessing the same case management system and coming up with different statistics. Dickens\u2019 stats are based on analysis of about 7,000 cases throughout the entirety of D\u2019Antonio\u2019s tenure, while the Third District DA’s Office released stats to NMPolitics.net in response to a records request that include more than 18,000 cases. Dickens suggested the DA\u2019s Office might be counting individual charges, rather than cases that could include multiple charges, but the DA\u2019s Office says that isn\u2019t the case.<\/p>\n The reason for the discrepancy isn\u2019t clear.<\/p>\n Interestingly, if you apply Dickens\u2019 method of interpreting the stats to the numbers released by the DA\u2019s Office, you get an even higher percentage of cases that didn\u2019t lead to convictions or were pleaded out \u2013 61 percent.<\/p>\n And, in the world of subjective interpretation, there are questions about Dickens’ explanation of the numbers. He adds together cases that didn\u2019t lead to convictions with plea bargains to get to his 46 percent claim \u2013 but plea bargains are convictions, even if on lesser charges.<\/p>\n Dickens defended lumping plea bargains in with cases that didn\u2019t lead to convictions, saying too often a plea bargain means a prosecutor dropped serious charges simply to close a case and mark it as a conviction. The most serious charges represent crimes that were \u201cthe most detrimental to the victim, the most detrimental to the community,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Dickens released an extensive spreadsheet to NMPolitics.net detailing case resolutions he says support his claim about 46 percent under D\u2019Antonio\u2019s watch not leading to convictions or being pleaded out. Dickens has come under fire for how he accessed those numbers.<\/p>\n D\u2019Antonio, in a May 5, 2016 letter<\/a> to 12th Judicial District Attorney David Ceballes, Dickens\u2019 boss, accused Dickens of \u201cinappropriate access to privileged information.\u201d Dickens accessed the information in his capacity as a prosecutor and is using it to further his political campaign, which D\u2019Antonio alleged might be illegal.<\/p>\n Dickens said the information is public record and he is confident he did nothing wrong. And he accused D\u2019Antonio of attacking a whistleblower who is exposing \u201chis office\u2019s abysmal record.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the typical bureaucrat’s tactic when their malfeasance has been laid bare to public scrutiny,\u201d Dickens said.<\/p>\n D\u2019Antonio accused Dickens of accessing the information using his government-owned computer during work hours — which Dickens told NMPolitics.net he “categorically” denies. Dickens accused D\u2019Antonio of directing \u201chis own, publicly funded, District Attorney investigators to review the matter\u201d and called that an \u201cethical dilemma.\u201d<\/p>\n Henry Valdez, director of the state’s Administrative Office of the District Attorneys (AODA), which maintains the\u00a0case management system, wouldn\u2019t comment on the ethics of a prosecutor accessing the system to compile statistics for campaign purposes. But he explained that the system was implemented with public money to help district attorneys and some other law enforcement agencies share information between jurisdictions. That\u2019s especially important when an agency is trying to determine whether a defendant has criminal cases in another part of the state.<\/p>\n Information in the case management system is also used for the state\u2019s victim notification system \u2013 which lets people sign up to receive text messages when a case\u2019s status changes.<\/p>\n Some of the information in the system is public record, but some \u2013 like internal district attorney files for active cases, or information about mental commitments or other medical information \u2013 may not be public, Valdez said.<\/p>\n The fight over statistics \u2013 what they mean and how they were obtained \u2013 isn\u2019t the only battle dragging this contest into the mud. In the Democratic primary, D\u2019Antonio wants voters to believe Dickens isn\u2019t a real Democrat.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s a good prosecutor, but [the party change] shows that he\u2019s willing to do anything it takes to get elected,\u201d D\u2019Antonio said. The accusation is part of D\u2019Antonio\u2019s efforts\u00a0to tie Dickens to his political nemeses \u2013 Martinez and Orlando.<\/p>\n But switching parties from Republican to Democrat is something D\u2019Antonio also did.<\/p>\n Dickens, whose switch came three years before campaigning for DA, in March 2013, said his son\u2019s diagnosis of autism and his family\u2019s search for help led to an ideological shift.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I see politicians play political football with the health-care system, with access to mental health, I get a cold sweat thinking of what would have happened to my son had we not had access to all of resources we had at the time,\u201d Dickens said. \u201cIt opened my eyes to the idea that we\u2019re not just self-made people. We\u2019re a part of a community.\u201d<\/p>\n D\u2019Antonio said his party change, which came in March 2011, a year before he filed to run for DA, was sincere.<\/p>\n \u201cI truly am a liberal and have proved it ever since I have been here \u2013 and I\u2019ve fought Susana Martinez more than anyone else in the other part of the state,\u201d D\u2019Antonio said.<\/p>\n Dickens urged voters to compare the situations.<\/p>\n \u201cHe switched from Republican to Democrat in March of 2011 and was collecting signatures in his bid for election before the end of that year,\u201d Dickens wrote in a statement to the media. \u201cNow I do not know if his switch was as cynical a political ploy as it appears, or a genuine perspective change. Frankly, I do not care.\u201d<\/p>\n Whatever the case, the winner of the June 7 Democratic primary will face a candidate who is currently registered as a Republican \u2013 Brad Cates, a former state and federal prosecutor and state representative \u2013 in November. Cates is dealing with his own controversy<\/a> over images that were posted on a personal website.<\/p>\n Heath Haussamen contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Attacks aside, one notable fact that sets the candidates apart is challenger James Dickens\u2019 massive fundraising lead over incumbent Mark D’Antonio.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2960,"featured_media":153030,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[708,142,115,203],"class_list":["post-153003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-2016-election","tag-crime","tag-dona-ana-county","tag-law-enforcement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153003","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\/2960"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Dismissals and plea bargains<\/h3>\n
![\"Mark](\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/DAntonio-Mark-336x341.jpg\")
![\"James](\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Dickens-James-336x341.jpg\")
Questions about how Dickens accessed stats<\/h3>\n
Switched parties \u2013 and changes of heart?<\/h3>\n