(C) El Paso Matters.org
This story was originally published by El Paso Matters.org and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Rebuilding understaffed prosecution office is top priority for new DA James Montoya [1]
['Robert Moore', 'More Robert Moore', 'El Paso Matters', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width']
Date: 2024-12-30
On a Sunday three days before Christmas, District Attorney-elect James Montoya was at work on the second floor of the county courthouse, preparing to take over a job he had sought for more than four years.
Montoya has worked in the prosecutor’s office for almost a month after receiving a surprise Election Night call from Bill Hicks, the appointed incumbent district attorney Montoya had just defeated in a sometimes contentious campaign.
“The night of the election, DA Hicks gave me a call to concede the election and inform me that he would be extending an offer to start in the office for this transition period. I was a bit surprised by the offer, but I’m very grateful for it,” Montoya said in an interview with El Paso Matters in the district attorney’s conference room.
Montoya, 35, faces a number of challenges as he prepares to formally assume the position Jan. 1. The District Attorney’s Office has struggled since Yvonne Rosales took office in 2021 and fired or drove off dozens of experienced prosecutors who had worked for longtime District Attorney Jaime Esparza. Montoya – who lost to Rosales in the 2020 Democratic runoff election – was among those who left.
Rosales resigned two years into the job, facing a petition to remove her from office on grounds of incompetence. During her tenure, cases backed up as a shorthanded prosecution staff struggled to keep up with their work. In a stunning moment, Rosales and one of her top aides asserted their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination as the judge in the 2019 Walmart mass shooting case investigated an effort by Rosales associates to exploit the family of a Juárez man killed in the shooting.
El Paso District Attorney Yvonne Rosales is sworn in prior to testifying on Thursday, Dec. 1, 2022, during a hearing regarding the Walmart mass shooting case and her role in sending an email. Rosales invoked her Fifth Amendment rights and did not answer any questions. She is flanked by her attorneys, Matthew DeKoatz, standing, and Richard Roman, sitting. (Angela Saavedra/El Paso Matters.)
Gov. Greg Abbott appointed Hicks, a fellow Republican, to succeed Rosales, a Democrat. During the campaign, Montoya said Hicks had failed to rebuild a demoralized office, an accusation the incumbent disputed.
For the next four years, it’s Montoya’s job to rebuild an understaffed and at times demoralized prosecution team.
“My number one priority, and I’ve conveyed it to the lawyers here, is to staff our trial courts, which are the lawyers that handle the cases, the daily docket, the daily grind,” he said.
Before Rosales took office, two prosecutors were typically assigned to each trial court. But over the past four years, many courts have had a single prosecutor.
“Some lawyers have expressed to me that they don’t feel like they could take leave because if they take vacation, there’s literally no one to cover their cases,” Montoya said.
As a result, the number of people detained in the county jail has been rising even as the number of people newly booked into the jail has fallen sharply, he said.
“I think the cause of that is we’re not moving cases quickly or really at all. That goes back to the lack of prosecutors in the courtrooms. That’s the priority,” Montoya said.
The Walmart mass shooting case
Montoya will become the fourth district attorney responsible for prosecuting the worst mass murder in El Paso’s history – the Aug. 3, 2019, shooting at the Cielo Vista Walmart that killed 23 people and wounded 22 others.
READ MORE: Walmart mass shooting case looms over El Paso district attorney race
Because Montoya is now working in the District Attorney’s Office, he’s subject to a gag order in the Walmart shooting case that 409th District Judge Sam Medrano issued in 2022.
“The people who are working on the case now are going to continue to work on it. I’ll just refer to my comments during the campaign,” he said in response to a question about how he’d approach the case.
Montoya’s public statements on the Walmart shooting case evolved during the 2024 campaign. Initially, he vowed to continue pursuing the death penalty.
But at an October candidate forum sponsored by El Paso Matters and FitFam El Paso, Montoya said he wanted to review evidence about two key factors that a jury would have to decide before imposing the death penalty – whether mitigating factors such as mental illness mitigated against capital punishment, and whether the gunman represents a future danger to society.
WATCH: DA candidates meet for forum sponsored by El Paso Matters, FitFam El Paso
No trial date has been set for Patrick Crusius, who faces state charges of capital murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The state case was on hold until after the federal government completed its prosecution of Crusius on hate crimes and weapons charges.
Accused Walmart mass shooter Patrick Crusius, center, listens to a hearing in 409th District Court on Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024. He his flanked by defense lawyers Felix Valenzuela, left, and Mark Stevens. (Ruben R. Ramirez/El Paso Inc)
The Walmart gunman pleaded guilty in 2023 after federal prosecutors decided not to seek the death penalty. He was sentenced to 90 consecutive life terms, with a recommendation that his sentence be served at the federal prison system’s most secure facility in Florence, Colorado.
In the year and a half since the end of federal proceedings, that state case has been slowed by allegations from defense attorneys that prosecutors haven’t turned over evidence and engaged in other behavior that amounted to prosecutorial misconduct. Hicks repeatedly denied the allegations.
Medrano has issued a scheduling order that calls for pretrial hearings beginning in January and the jury selection process starting as soon as the end of 2025. But defense lawyers have asked Medrano to reconsider the order because of their misconduct allegations.
Setting priorities for prosecution
Because of resource constraints and other issues, no district attorney can prosecute every crime brought to the office. So prosecutors use what is known as discretion in deciding what cases to bring into the criminal justice system.
Montoya said he’ll have two priorities when he takes office – violent crimes and drunk driving.
“We all want to live in a safe community. We want safe public spaces, including safe public roads,” he said.
“That starts with crimes of violence. Those are going to be number one. That includes shootings, stabbings, assaults, domestic violence that happens in private spaces, crimes against children,” Montoya said.
El Paso police officers, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies respond to a shooting inside Cielo Vista Mall on Feb. 15, 2023. One person was killed and three wounded in the shooting. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
He said he heard repeatedly from voters during the campaign that they want something done about drunk driving.
Montoya said that while many voters view drunk driving as a particularly acute problem in El Paso, he said he sees it more as a “Texas problem” because of a heavy reliance on vehicles in sprawling cities.
He said prosecuting cases of driving while intoxicated is difficult because of how many people view the crime.
“What makes them so hard to prosecute is, people know people who commit DWI. Their friends, their family members. There is an unspoken, and this is what’s so troubling, kind of acceptance that people know people who do it and they don’t call them out on it,” Montoya said.
He said he wants to put more cases involving repeat DWI offenders before jurors to give the community the opportunity to determine what message they want to send on such cases.
“Do they want us to give them 10 years of probation? Do they want us to start sending them to the penitentiary?” Montoya said.
Judicial criticism of prosecutors
Montoya will take office in the wake of scathing criticism from two judges who found in December that prosecutors had acted improperly in handling cases.
A judge in rural West Texas ruled that the El Paso District Attorney’s Office, which also has jurisdiction in Hudspeth and Culberson counties, illegally withheld evidence from defense attorneys in five cases. An El Paso County judge ruled that high-ranking prosecutors in the DA’s office had altered a court record in appealing his decision to dismiss charges against 59 migrants charged with riot participation.
READ MORE: Judge rules El Paso DA illegally withheld evidence in at least 5 rural cases
El Paso Chief Public Defender Kelli Childress – who Montoya worked for before his Nov. 5 election – said prosecutors in the District Attorney’s Office have long faced “absolute, utter lack of accountability” that has created systemic problems among prosecutors.
Montoya said he believes the District Attorney’s Office faces systemic challenges, but blamed chronic understaffing.
“In my opinion, it was entirely predictable that something like this lapses in our discovery. Very predictable. I want to make sure that we’re having enough lawyers out there, that we have enough administrative staff working out there,” he said.
The migrant case issues were caused by Hicks’ insistence on prosecuting misdemeanor charges that stemmed from a mass arrest situation, Montoya said.
Hundreds of migrants overrun the Texas National Guard concertina wire in El Paso on March 21, 2024, in an effort to reach the border wall to request asylum. Another group of migrants ran past the wire and guardsmen on April 12, 2024. (Rey R. Jauregui / La Verdad)
“I think there needed to be a lot more discernment about which cases we were pursuing,” he said.
Hicks’ appeal of the dismissal of the 59 indictments on misdemeanor riot participation charges remains before the Eighth Court of Appeals. But Montoya said he hasn’t made a decision on continuing the appeal.
“But I will tell you that these cases are not high priority,” he said. Most of all of the defendants have left El Paso and many are in federal immigration custody.
“We would be expending a tremendous amount of resources to bring folks back from wherever they are here to El Paso to face a Class B misdemeanor where the current plea offer is one day (in jail) with credit for time served,” Montoya said.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
http://elpasomatters.org/2024/12/30/james-montoya-outlines-plans-as-el-paso-district-attorney/
Published and (C) by El Paso Matters.org
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0 International.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/elpasomatters/
