{"id":94102,"date":"2015-10-24T19:44:26","date_gmt":"2015-10-25T01:44:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=94102"},"modified":"2015-10-24T19:44:45","modified_gmt":"2015-10-25T01:44:45","slug":"dianna-durans-plea-deal-seems-fair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2015\/10\/dianna-durans-plea-deal-seems-fair\/","title":{"rendered":"Dianna Duran’s plea deal seems fair"},"content":{"rendered":"

COMMENTARY:<\/strong>\u00a0Dianna Duran is a woman almost 60\u00a0years of age who has basically been a law-abiding citizen almost her entire life. It appears as if her criminal behavior<\/a> had something to do with a gambling problem. I would not be surprised if there are drug or alcohol issues as well.<\/p>\n

\"C.J.<\/a>

Courtesy photo<\/p>

C.J. McElhinney<\/p><\/div>\n

I do not know much about Ms. Duran, but I seem to recall that she has been a public servant nearly her entire life. I think that should count for something.<\/p>\n

Yes, she betrayed the trust of the people. But she has now been removed from office<\/a> and is barred from ever holding office again. Duran has suffered some pretty severe public criticism and embarrassment. Her life is ruined.<\/p>\n

A trial would be long and costly. I think she should be given some credit for saving judicial and prosecutorial resources by pleading<\/a> early in the case.<\/p>\n

There is almost always an outcry for maximum punishment in a case like this, but that’s also why the judicial branch of government is the least democratic of the three: It has to temper fairness with compassion for the accused. Let’s try to learn from her mistakes and allow her to pay her debt to society, but long term incarceration? Seriously?<\/p>\n

All in all, it seems like a pretty fair deal<\/a> to me.<\/p>\n

McElhinney is an attorney at Johnson & McElhinney P.C. in Las Cruces.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is almost always an outcry for maximum punishment in a case like this, but that’s also why the judicial branch of government is the least democratic of the three: It has to temper fairness with compassion for the accused.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":94104,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,16],"tags":[142,1191,705,107],"class_list":["post-94102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-guest-columns","tag-crime","tag-dianna-duran","tag-money-in-politics","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94102","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=94102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}