{"id":29199,"date":"2011-05-12T18:52:11","date_gmt":"2011-05-13T00:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=29199"},"modified":"2011-10-08T21:49:23","modified_gmt":"2011-10-09T03:49:23","slug":"murphy-grand-jury-now-set-to-meet-friday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2011\/05\/murphy-grand-jury-now-set-to-meet-friday\/","title":{"rendered":"Murphy grand jury now scheduled to meet Friday"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_27974\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignright\" style=\"max-width: 270px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-27974 \" title=\"Murphy, Mike 4\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/Murphy-Mike-4.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"270\" height=\"236\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">District Judge Mike Murphy<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em>Updated 5\/13\/11, 6:30 a.m.: As was the case Thursday, Heath Haussamen will tweet live from district court as the situation develops today. Follow him on Twitter <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/haussamen\" target=\"_blank\">@haussamen<\/a>, or for those of you who aren\u2019t familiar with Twitter, at <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/haussamen\" target=\"_blank\">twitter.com\/haussamen<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>An early morning hearing in the bribery case against Third Judicial District Judge Mike Murphy ended up lasting all day, and a grand jury that was scheduled to meet today has been delayed until Friday.<\/p>\n<p>The reason for the closed-door hearing isn\u2019t known. It was already ongoing when NMPolitics.net arrived at the courthouse in Las Cruces at 8:30 a.m. today. It was still going on when NMPolitics.net left the courthouse at 4 p.m.<\/p>\n<p>Grand jury members and witnesses subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury waited until nearly 4 p.m. before being told to go home and handed another subpoena to appear Friday at 9 a.m. Special prosecutor Matt Chandler plans to ask the grand jury to OK bribery charges against Murphy.<\/p>\n<p>Because grand jury proceedings are secret, the identities of witnesses in the case weren\u2019t known before today, when they showed up at court. Though this may not be a complete list, those Chandler plans to call to testify include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>District Judge Jim T. Martin<\/li>\n<li>Former District Judge Stephen Bridgforth<\/li>\n<li>Former Appeals Court Judge and Las Cruces attorney Beverly Singleman<\/li>\n<li>Edgar Lopez, a longtime Democratic political insider who heads a Las Cruces real estate company<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Is Lopez the \u2018local political figure?\u2019<\/h3>\n<p>Lopez was perhaps the most interesting of those who showed up at court today. Murphy is alleged to have paid a bribe in exchange for then-Gov.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bill_Richardson\" target=\"_blank\">Bill Richardson<\/a> appointing him to the bench in 2006, and possibly also soliciting bribes for Richardson from applicants for other judgeships.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_29200\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 270px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-29200 \" title=\"Lopez, Edgar\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/Lopez-Edgar.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"270\" height=\"230\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Edgar Lopez, a longtime Democratic political insider, was among those subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury. He and the others waited hours at the courthouse today before being told to come back Friday. (Photo by Heath Haussamen)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The bribe or bribes were allegedly paid as political contributions and went to an unnamed\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.abqjournal.com\/news\/state\/0206114366newsstate04-02-11.htm\" target=\"_blank\">\u201clocal political figure.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Lopez declined to talk with NMPolitics.net about the case today. But he was heavily involved behind the scenes in the selection of judges during Richardson\u2019s tenure. He has said to many people in Do\u00f1a Ana County \u2013 including me \u2013 that judicial applicants needed to go through him to get to Richardson. He sat on a judicial nominating commission that recommended candidates to fill an appeals court vacancy <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2007\/09\/shackling-controversy-erupts-before-robles-interview\/\">in 2007<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And Lopez was involved when Murphy was appointed to the bench in 2006. In fact, NMPolitics.net <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2006\/06\/some-democrats-pushing-politico-macias-but-other-judicial-applicants-are-better-candidates\/\" target=\"_blank\">documented Lopez\u2019s presence<\/a> at a judicial nominating commission meeting that year, when the commission recommended Murphy and two others to Richardson for consideration.<\/p>\n<p>After Richardson appointed Murphy in 2006, Lopez lobbied the state Democratic Party to get behind the appointment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur great Governor Bill Richardson has asked us all to support\u00a0Michael Murphy,\u201d Lopez was quoted by the Las Cruces Sun-News as saying at a Democratic Party meeting following Richardson\u2019s appointment.<\/p>\n<h3>Lots going on behind the scenes<\/h3>\n<p>Today\u2019s delay was at least the third in the case. In addition, a Silver City judge \u2013 Sixth Judicial District Judge J.C. Robinson \u2013 has held at least three pre-grand jury hearings in the case including today\u2019s, which is highly unusual since judges aren\u2019t usually that involved in grand juries.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>District judges convene grand juries, but judges do not preside over grand jury proceedings \u2013 closed-door meetings at which prosecutors try to convince grand juries to charge someone with a crime.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, the heightened security that was evident during a hearing held in the case <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2011\/05\/grand-jury-meets-may-12-in-murphy-case\/\" target=\"_blank\">last week<\/a> was present again today. The Do\u00f1a Ana County Sheriff\u2019s Department SWAT team was at the courthouse. Officials aren\u2019t commenting on the reason for the increased security.<\/p>\n<p>Clearly, there\u2019s a lot going on behind the scenes in this case, but those involved aren\u2019t revealing much about it. It\u2019s likely that Murphy\u2019s attorney, Michael Stout of Las Cruces, is challenging Chandler\u2019s handling of the grand jury, which is why hearings before a judge are necessary.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, several people, including Murphy\u2019s former law partner Tito Meyer, appeared at the courthouse today as possible witnesses, but they were sent home early. The defense doesn\u2019t normally get to call witnesses during grand jury proceedings, but it\u2019s unlikely Meyer and others would have left if they were witnesses for the prosecution.<\/p>\n<p>Murphy didn\u2019t appear in court for today\u2019s events, but his wife was there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>UPDATED: An early morning hearing in the bribery case against Third Judicial District Judge Mike Murphy ended up lasting all day, and a grand jury that was scheduled to meet today has been delayed until Friday. Heath Haussamen will tweet live from district court as the situation develops Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[112,142,115,216,161,114,107],"class_list":["post-29199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-bill-richardson","tag-crime","tag-dona-ana-county","tag-judge-murphy","tag-judiciary","tag-public-corruption","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29199","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=29199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}