{"id":717,"date":"2006-10-13T11:27:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-13T17:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2006\/10\/breaking-news-court-asked-to-remove-garza\/"},"modified":"2006-10-13T11:27:00","modified_gmt":"2006-10-13T17:27:00","slug":"breaking-news-court-asked-to-remove-garza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2006\/10\/breaking-news-court-asked-to-remove-garza\/","title":{"rendered":"BREAKING NEWS: Court asked to remove Garza"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Judicial Standards Commission filed today a petition with the New Mexico Supreme Court seeking the permanent removal from office of Do\u00f1a Ana County Magistrate Judge Carlos Garza. <\/p>\n

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

The petition, filed Friday morning, comes after a secret trial before the commission held earlier this week. Garza was accused of illegal drug use and a host of other improprieties.<\/p>\n

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

I\u2019m still trying to get a copy of the petition and will have more on this later today.<\/p>\n

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

The high court has already placed Garza on suspension without pay though Oct. 20 and, following that, suspension with pay until Nov. 3 to give the commission time to investigate.<\/p>\n

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

Justices last month ordered Garza to submit to a hair test for illegal drugs in response to the allegation that he was using drugs. The high court ordered the suspension without pay last month after Garza refused the commission\u2019s previous demand that he submit to drug testing.<\/p>\n

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

The other allegations against Garza are:<\/p>\n

\u2022 that he violated local court rules of the Do\u00f1a Ana County Magistrate Court<\/st1:address><\/st1:street>.<\/p>\n

\u2022 that he attempted to bring a minor into a bar.<\/p>\n

\u2022 that he was in a car with Lauren Spillsbury when she was pulled over for speeding, and asked the police officer, \u201cDo you know who I am?\u201d and told Spillsbury, \u201cDon\u2019t worry, I\u2019ll take care of these tickets.\u201d Interfering in Spillsbury\u2019s drunken driving case landed Garza on probation and in formal mentorship earlier this year.<\/p>\n

\u2022 that he ordered Spillsbury\u2019s license cleared of any suspensions in the middle of a pending case.<\/p>\n

\u2022 that he was removed from the on-call list of judges who can sign warrant requests from police officers because, on two occasions, he revealed the identities of undercover officers to people at a bar.<\/p>\n

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

Garza is running unopposed for re-election this year. If he doesn\u2019t return to the bench, the governor will appoint his replacement. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Judicial Standards Commission filed today a petition with the New Mexico Supreme Court seeking the permanent removal from office of Do\u00f1a Ana County Magistrate Judge Carlos Garza. The petition, filed Friday morning, comes after a secret trial before the commission held earlier this week. Garza was accused of illegal drug use and a host […]<\/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-717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717","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=717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}