{"id":583,"date":"2006-09-15T12:06:00","date_gmt":"2006-09-15T18:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2006\/09\/legislators-criticism-of-judicial-standards-commission-doesnt-tell-the-whole-story\/"},"modified":"2006-09-15T12:06:00","modified_gmt":"2006-09-15T18:06:00","slug":"legislators-criticism-of-judicial-standards-commission-doesnt-tell-the-whole-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2006\/09\/legislators-criticism-of-judicial-standards-commission-doesnt-tell-the-whole-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Legislators’ criticism of Judicial Standards Commission doesn’t tell the whole story"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Two legislators criticized the Judicial Standards Commission at Thursday\u2019s committee meeting in Las Cruces<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> because they said its actions have made judges afraid to be in a courtroom while their children deal with speeding tickets. <\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

State reps. Ken Martinez<\/a>, D-Grants, and Joseph Cervantes<\/a>, D-Las Cruces, both made comments referencing the case of former Do\u00f1a Ana County Magistrate Judge Susana Chaparro<\/a>, who resigned earlier this year as part of an agreement with the Judicial Standards Commission<\/a>. Chaparro was disciplined in 2005 by the state Supreme Court<\/a> for improperly involving herself in her adult son\u2019s traffic case.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cFor heaven\u2019s sake, a judge doesn\u2019t stop being a parent, but now they\u2019re afraid to go sit in court if their kid gets a speeding ticket,\u201d Martinez<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> said.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cI cannot fathom asking a judge to not be able to sit in a courtroom when their child has a speeding ticket,\u201d Cervantes said.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Both made their comments as they criticized several recent actions of the commission.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Though the two did not name Chaparro\u2019s as the case about which they were speaking, there have been no similar case in recent years. Commission Director Jim Noel said the comments made by the representatives do not reflect the facts of the Chaparro case.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cI agree wholeheartedly with Representative Cervantes and Representative Martinez. They\u2019re exactly right. It would be absurd to think that a judge couldn\u2019t sit in the back of the courtroom while his or her son or daughter was being arraigned on a traffic ticket,\u201d Noel said. \u201cThere has never been a case before the commission reflective of what they\u2019re suggesting. \u2026 The facts of (the Chaparro) case are vastly different than simply sitting in the back of a courtroom during an arraignment.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

In its formal reprimand of Chaparro, dated June 22, 2005, the high court found that she \u201cdirectly involved herself in the criminal proceedings involving her son by contacting the sheriff to complain about how her son was allegedly mistreated, accessing her son\u2019s file through private requests to the clerk\u2019s office, calling the presiding judge\u2019s clerk to reschedule a hearing due to her son experiencing car trouble, and attending hearings with her son, where members of the public were present, including the scheduled trial where the citation was ultimately dismissed.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

All this, the ruling states, means Chaparro \u201cimproperly involved herself in, and interfered with, the adjudication\u201d of the case.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The court found that Chaparro\u2019s actions were egregious enough, coupled with prior misconduct, that its justices rejected the commission\u2019s recommendation for discipline and imposed tougher sanctions.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The commission asked for a 60-day suspension, to be deferred on the condition that Chaparro complete one year of supervised probation, but the court instead suspended Chaparro for two weeks without pay, with an additional six-week suspension that would be deferred if she completed a year of supervised probation.<\/p>\n

\n

Update, 2:15 p.m. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In an interview, Chaparro reiterated what she has maintained all along: She does not believe she did anything wrong or attempted to influence the decisions of the judges in the case.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Chaparro also said when her case was before the high court, Justice Edward Chavez asked Noel, \u201cDo you mean if my son got a ticket I couldn\u2019t accompany him?\u201d Chaparro says Noel told Chavez he could not.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

A copy of the transcript, provided by Noel, states that Chavez did ask such a question. Noel answered this way:<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cJustice Chavez, that matter is not before this court and that\u2019s a matter that I think is for another day,\u201d Noel said.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

He then went on to tell Chavez that if such a complaint came to the commission it would investigate, but that the findings of the commission in the Chaparro case are much different.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the commission found is she did more than just sit in the gallery,\u201d Noel said, according to the transcript. \u201cShe involved herself. She tried to steer the direction of the adjudication of that case.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Chaparro said she stands by her memory of the hearing.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cI can tell you that\u2019s what I recall that happened,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two legislators criticized the Judicial Standards Commission at Thursday\u2019s committee meeting in Las Cruces because they said its actions have made judges afraid to be in a courtroom while their children deal with speeding tickets. State reps. Ken Martinez, D-Grants, and Joseph Cervantes, D-Las Cruces, both made comments referencing the case of former Do\u00f1a Ana […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583","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=583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}