Prosecutors urge 90-year sentence for Solomon Peña to discourage political violence - By Olivier Uyttebrouck, Albuquerque Journal
Prosecutors are recommending that a federal judge sentence Solomon Peña this week to at least 90 years in prison, arguing that a lengthy sentence will help deter others tempted to use violence to achieve political ends.
A federal jury in March convicted Peña of 13 felonies for orchestrating a string of shootings at the homes of four Democratic elected officials following the 2022 election.
Peña, 42, is scheduled for sentencing on Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque before Judge Kea W. Riggs.
The hearing will conclude a three-year political saga that began in November 2022 when Peña lost an election, leading to a series of reprisal shootings targeting the homes of Albuquerque officials.
Peña’s attorneys on Friday asked the judge to sentence him to 60 years in prison, the minimum allowed by law.
“Mr. Peña maintains his innocence and requests that the Court sentence him to the mandatory minimum of 60 years,” Albuquerque attorney Nicholas Hart wrote in the defendant’s sentencing memorandum.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office filed a detailed sentencing memorandum on Wednesday arguing that the maximum sentence of 90 years to life imprisonment was called for “to reflect the seriousness of the offense” and “promote respect for the law.” No one was killed or injured by gunfire in the attacks for which Peña was convicted.
“His project, his mission, is to undermine our Republic through fear and violence,” it said. “A representative republic cannot exist if citizens are afraid to run for office, to vote, or to count votes.”
Peña’s actions “constitute a significant escalation of political and personal violence,” the memorandum said. A lengthy sentence is “necessary to afford adequate deterrence to others who would follow a similar path.”
Peña’s sentencing hearing follows a series of high-profile attacks on politicians around the U.S. unrelated to Peña’s case.
They include a June 14 attack in Minnesota that killed Democratic state Rep. Melissa Hortman, a former Minnesota House speaker, and her husband, Mark, who were fatally shot in their home. Earlier that day and just miles away, Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife were shot and wounded at their home.
Vance Boelter, 58, of Green Isle, Minnesota, pleaded not guilty Thursday to six counts of murder, stalking and firearms violations in those shootings.
In Pennsylvania, authorities have arrested and charged a man who allegedly set fire to the governor’s mansion in April while Gov. Josh Shapiro and his family slept, forcing them to evacuate and severely damaging the building.
Peña’s trial
At Peña’s weeklong trial in March, prosecutors argued that Peña planned and ordered shootings at the homes of two state lawmakers and two Bernalillo County commissioners, directing the actions of his co-defendants.
In closing arguments, Peña’s attorneys put full responsibility for the shootings on Peña’s co-defendants, Jose and Demetrio Trujillo, both of whom offered lengthy testimony during the trial.
Hart told jurors to remain skeptical of the Trujillos’ testimony, saying both men sought favorable sentences in exchange for testimony implicating Peña as the mastermind.
Both of the Trujillos pleaded guilty earlier this year to multiple federal charges. In May, two months after Peña’s trial, the judge sentenced Demetrio Trujillo, 43, to 15 years in prison and Jose Trujillo, 24, to 37 months.
Prosecutors contend that Peña was motivated by his November 2022 election loss to incumbent state Rep. Miguel P. Garcia, D-Albuquerque, by a margin of nearly 50 percentage points. Peña later posted on social media that the election was “rigged.”
“Defendant’s motives were political, on the personal, local and national levels,” prosecutors wrote in the sentencing memorandum. “He acted out of personal political motivation to seek revenge against the officials who had certified the results of his electoral contest and ‘laughed’ at him while doing it.”
The Trujillos testified that Peña conspired with them to fire gunshots at the Albuquerque homes of four Democratic elected officials between Dec. 4, 2022, and Jan. 3, 2023.
Prosecutors said that on Jan. 3, 2023, Jose Trujillo fired 12 rounds from a fully automatic machine gun at the home where state Sen. Linda Lopez and her 10-year-old daughter slept. Peña himself fired once before his gun jammed.
“Senator Lopez testified that the bullets that ripped into her house entered her bedroom and her daughter’s bedroom,” prosecutors wrote in the memorandum. “A bullet flew just over her daughter as she slept.”
Law enforcement got a break in the case later that night when a Bernalillo County Sheriff’s deputy stopped Jose Trujillo, who was driving Peña’s car with guns in the trunk used in the Lopez shooting.
Other elected officials targeted were Bernalillo County Commissioner Adriann Barboa, former county commissioner and now state Sen. Debbie O’Malley, and House Speaker Javier Martínez, D-Albuquerque.
Peña “acted out of a desire to engage with national politics, to fight back against what he saw as the ‘oligarchs’ who had ‘rigged’ previous elections,” the memorandum said. “He chose violence and intimidation as his tools to achieve his personal, local, and national political objectives.”
In their sentencing memorandum, prosecutors cite Peña’s attempts to eliminate his codefendants by offering a car and $10,000 to any inmate who could kill Jose or Demetrio Trujillo, for which Peña was convicted of three counts of solicitation to commit a crime of violence.
The memorandum also cites Peña’s prior criminal history, which includes state convictions for auto burglary, receiving stolen property and other crimes. Federal prosecutors also contend that Peña’s profession was “storm chasing,” which they describe as “the practice of defrauding insurance companies by repairing nonexistent damage.”
New Mexico congressman proposes oil and gas companies pay for employees’ health care costs - Danielle Prokop, Source New Mexico
His voice steady, Marcos Carranza, an immigrant and retired oil and gas worker, recounted that he saw coworkers die on the job during his 15 years in the industry.
“The most vulnerable workers need the most support since they are affected the most,” Carranza said in Spanish.
U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez (D-N.M.), who represents border communities in New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District, says he’s hoping to help provide that support.
After a day of triple-digit heat across much of the Southwestern corner of the state, Vasquez on Aug. 7 announced the reintroduction of legislation mandating oil and gas companies to pay for oil and gas workers’ health care costs.
“You are the ones sacrificing your bodies, your health,” Vasquez said to the crowd of about two dozen people, including oil workers and their families, gathered under the awning in Heizer Park for the announcement. Most wore yellow shirts emblazoned with the sunburst logo of immigrant rights group Somos Un Pueblo Unido.
Earlier this year, Somos Un Pueblo Unido released a report with researchers from the University of New Mexico that documents conditions for workers in the oil-and-gas producing Permian Basin, including: work days exceeding 12 hours; dangerous driving conditions; hazardous workplaces; and a lack of access to health care or unemployment benefits during injuries or downturns.
New Mexico’s Permian counties — including Eddy and Lea counties — consistently rank poorly on national surveys of air quality and Southeastern counties have reported high rates of asthma hospitalizations, particularly in Chaves County.
Vasquez’s legislation, introduced on Tuesday, requires oil and gas companies making more than $50 million a year in revenues to pay into a trust fund to reimburse oil and gas workers for medical costs related to low air quality and prolonged heat exposure. Vasquez introduced a similar measure in 2023.
The fund, which requires contributions equal to the total paid to each company’s 10 top-compensated employees, would allow reimbursement for out-of-pocket medical costs to oil and gas workers, their spouses and children for certain health conditions, including asthma; illnesses due to heat exposure; and cardiovascular diseases linked to methane exposure.
In the new version of the bill, Vasquez is also calling for a federal study of long-term health outcomes in oil and gas producing states: New Mexico, Texas, North Dakota, Colorado, Louisiana and Alaska.
Vasquez noted that Latino and Hispanic workers, many of them immigrants, represent a significant portion of New Mexico’s oil and gas workforce. The U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics estimates Latino and Hispanic workers accounted for one-third of the national workforce in 2024.
“It’s really important to me that the Hispanic community in the Southeast part of New Mexico feels that they are represented, that they are taken care of, for their contributions in this country,” he said.
Vasquez said that people who are undocumented or hired by contractors or subcontractors are vulnerable to losing out on unemployment and health care, and this fund would address some of the gaps.
“We cannot accept that these folks don’t deserve the same level of health care that other workers deserve,” Vasquez told Source NM. “When it comes to respiratory diseases — not just for them, but for their families as well — they must be taken care of. Because if we’re going to generate billions of dollars for the oil gas companies, we should also be able to spare enough to take care of the people who actually make those profits.”
Vasquez said Republicans in the administration are using harmful rhetoric and immigration enforcement to threaten U.S. oil and gas security, saying he hopes to offer “a reality shock” to members in Congress.
“They have to also come to accord with the fact that the majority of the Hispanic population here that is now being targeted for deportation from ICE is going to detract from those economic goals of the Republican Party,” he said.
Western New Mexico University settles dispute over new faculty union – Albuquerque Journal
A nascent faculty union at Western New Mexico University overcame a procedural hurdle in seeking recognition of its collective bargaining unit after settling objections by the administration over the unit’s composition last week.
The WNMU Faculty NEA is an affiliate of the National Education Association, the largest union representing educators nationwide. More than two-thirds of the Silver City faculty and librarians reportedly signed cards endorsing union representation on May 13, exceeding the 50% threshold for mandatory recognition of the union.
On Wednesday, WNMU-NEA organizers reported that the administration had raised three objections to the composition of the bargaining unit: The inclusion of librarians and applied technology faculty, as well as the exclusion of former WNMU president Joseph Shepard, who remained as a faculty member under the terms of a controversial separation agreement until regents effectively voided his contract on July 31.
It was in the aftermath of Shepard’s departure last December that the local union took shape, following a “tumultuous semester” as multiple state investigations, lawmakers and litigation probed lavish spending of taxpayer funds on luxury business travel and furnishings for the president’s residence — spending Shepard defended as legitimate university expenses.
After Shepard announced his resignation in December, the Board of Regents approved a $1.9 million severance payment as well as a remote faculty position paying $200,000 annually.
On July 31, newly-appointed regents unanimously declared that their predecessors violated New Mexico’s open meetings law when they approved the agreement, rendering it invalid. They then voted to reject the agreement, essentially ending Shepard’s faculty appointment. The status of his scheduled course load in WNMU’s business school is not clear.
Shepard called the regents’ action a “highly orchestrated political smear campaign to damage and destroy my reputation, career, and livelihood.”
The university did not provide a rationale for its objections when approached by the Journal. Chris Maples, the interim president who started on the job last week, said he saw nothing objectionable about including librarians or instructors in the department of applied technology — which grants certifications in construction, welding and electrical technology.
As for Shepard’s inclusion, Maples said the regents’ July 31 action appeared to render the question moot, but said that if Shepard were a faculty member “he would have every right to be part of the bargaining unit.”
“Shepard’s appointment as a faculty member did not align with the promotion, tenure, or workplace conditions of any faculty member and was therefore incongruent with our unit’s community of interest,” history professor Andrew Hernández, one of the union organizers, told the Journal.
The dispute over who gets to be in the new union was set for debate at a hearing before the state Public Employee Labor Relations Board on Friday, but the conflicts were settled July 31, organizers said.
“While we would have preferred to have avoided the investment of our time in preparation for the hearing and the university’s expenditure on legal counsel to object to our assessment of the unit’s composition, this is an important step forward,” Hernández stated in a news release. “We look forward to starting the collective bargaining process as legal equals and working with our new Board of Regents and interim president in restoring stability and trust in our university.”
Under New Mexico law, signatures from at least 30% of public employees who would be represented in the bargaining unit are required to initiate an election, and 40% of them must vote up or down in the election for it to be valid. However, if a majority of those employees sign valid authorization cards, the bargaining unit is certified automatically. The employer has the right to challenge the verification in a hearing before the PELRB.
If verified, WNMU would be the sixth higher education institution in the state to see its faculty organize, following the University of New Mexico and Central New Mexico Community College in Albuquerque; New Mexico State University, with its main campus in Las Cruces; New Mexico Highlands University in Las Vegas; and San Juan College in Farmington. Graduate student workers at UNM and NMSU have also unionized.
For his part, Maples, who will lead the university until a permanent successor is named, said he looked forward to working with faculty and students alike moving into the new school year, with classes beginning Aug. 18.
“This is a wonderful university and serves such a remarkable student body,” Maples said. “Students bring an energy and electricity and excitement to a campus that you just don’t get other places in the world.”