The New Mexico Supreme Court on Tuesday issued three rulings dealing with time limits on criminal charges, what kinds of structures can be burgled and whether union contracts limit someone’s ability to seek whistleblower protections.
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the New Mexico Court of Appeals was right to set aside embezzlement charges against former Taxation and Revenue Secretary Demesia Padilla.
Padilla, who was a cabinet secretary under Gov. Susana Martinez, resigned in 2016. State prosecutors in June 2018 charged her with embezzling money from one of her accounting firm’s clients in between 2011 and 2013; however, a district court threw out the charges because they were filed in the wrong place.
A grand jury in Sandoval County indicted Padilla in August 2019, and the district court there allowed the case to move forward, ruling that the time limit for filing criminal charges had been put on pause during the year between the initial charges being dismissed and the indictment.
The appeals court reversed, saying the part of the law that pauses the statute of limitations doesn’t apply to Padilla’s case. The Supreme Court’s ruling affirms that reversal, because the Sandoval County indictment happened more than six months after the time limit expired.
A majority of the Supreme Court tossed out felony murder and aggravated battery convictions of Joseph Matthew Gregory Jones for shooting and killing a Santa Fe homeowner in his backyard in 2018.
Felony murder is a...
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