Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed a bill Monday that amends state law dealing with detaining defendants before they’re given a fair trial. It requires that courts jail people accused of committing a second felony while awaiting trial for a first until a hearing is held to review their conditions of release. The governor and bill sponsor Sen. Daniel Ivey-Soto (D-Bernalillo) touted the measure at its signing as a major win for public safety, but it may have little impact.
Ivey-Soto said the bill is meant to stem the so-called “revolving door” of people getting let out of custody to await trial only to be accused of committing another serious crime. It requires that judges who were involved in a person's first felony case weigh in on their conditions of release for the second, potentially revoking them.
“It is going to make a direct impact on how safe our streets are going to be in Albuquerque,” he said at a signing ceremony at West Mesa High School in Albuquerque.
The thing is, very few people in Bernalillo County who are let out of jail ahead of their trial for a felony commit new violent crimes. A University of New Mexico study found it was less than 5%.
Ivey-Soto argued far more are accused of non-violent crimes that can still be “violating,” however the same study found the number who were accused of any new crime was still less than 20%.
The governor took issue with the study’s findings, arguing the 2021 results were skewed by a lower number of arrests being made at the time and by the vast majority of defendants in the sample being over the age of 23.
Regardless of those caveats, she added she doesn’t want to be “one of those 5%, where my family member’s been harmed, murdered, my business has been robbed, my car has been stolen.”
“We have to end this cycle,” she said. “And the way that you end the cycle, in part, is by making sure that individuals who are engaged in criminal activity know that this is a state that will hold you accountable.”
However, a Legislative Finance Committee analysis appears to show that the bill wouldn’t create much more accountability than the process already in place. Judges already released people on the condition that they do not break the law. If they’re accused of committing a new crime, violent or otherwise, “a judge is already quite likely to revoke the defendant’s release,” according to the report. The Law Offices of the Public Defender said about similar legislation that the existing system was “highly effective.”
The LFC analysis estimated the new law could result in “at most” about 570 more people being detained. However, that number is likely high, since it was calculated using a scenario where no judge held a defendant whose new felony charge was for a nonviolent offense. But the report states it’s likely judges would detain many defendants charged with nonviolent felonies under the previous process. So, the impact of the new law is likely to be even smaller.
