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Denish’s new ad makes an unsubstantiated leap
- Susana Martinez (left, courtesy photo) and Diane Denish (photo by Heath Haussamen)
Diane Denish’s newest TV ad attacking Susana Martinez for plea bargaining two cases involving crimes against children makes an unsubstantiated leap when it claims Martinez “allowed” child predators to avoid the sex offender registry.
In the ad, Denish highlights two cases – those involving a coach in the Hatch school district and a janitor in the Las Cruces district – who were charged with sex crimes against students at the schools where they worked.
The ad states that Martinez “cut deals” and “allowed these child predators to avoid publically registering as sex offenders.” But what if the plea bargains were necessary?
Here’s the ad:
I was a police reporter for years at the Las Cruces Sun-News. In fact, I wrote the initial articles when both Shawn Bohannon and Hector Montes – the defendants in the cases in question – were charged. I have seen how difficult testifying can be for many victims, especially children.
What if the victims in these cases were unwilling or otherwise unable to testify, and without their testimony Martinez’s office did not have the evidence to win convictions? Sure, sometimes a prosecutor can get a conviction on a sex-crime charge without a victim’s testimony, but that’s not true in every case.
If there wasn’t enough evidence to win convictions in these cases, should Martinez have taken them to trial – and lost them – just so she could say she never plea bargained with a sex offender? Or should she have done everything she could to obtain the maximum convictions possible?
Bohannon faced 29 fourth-degree felony counts of rape and molestation and other charges involving three teen girls. He admitted in his plea bargain to child abuse, a third-degree felony, and 14 counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a fourth-degree felony. (Read the case file here, courtesy of Denish’s campaign.)
The charges to which Bohannon admitted didn’t require him to register as a sex offender.
Montes was charged with one count of molesting a girl at Las Cruces High School but agreed to a plea bargain in which he instead admitted to contributing to the delinquency of a minor. The conviction didn’t require him to register as a sex offender. (Read the case file here.)
Sex offender registry not for ‘use as a plea bargain carrot’
Denish’s ad states that the plea bargains resulted “because Susana Martinez didn’t do her job.” I asked Denish’s campaign staff how they know the failure to win stronger convictions was due to Martinez not doing her job instead of other factors such as victims being unable or unwilling to testify.
The response, from Denish spokesman Chris Cervini:
“Diane isn’t a lawyer, but she’s a mother and a grandmother, and she knows it’s wrong to cut deals with sexual predators that allow them to stay off the public sex offender registry. In these cases, these offenders worked at local schools. Every parent in the area should be able to look them up and keep their children away – that’s why we have the public sex offender registry. It’s not there for Martinez to use as a plea bargain carrot.”
Which doesn’t really explain how or even if Denish knows Martinez had an option other than plea-bargaining or taking a case to trial she couldn’t win.
In a follow-up statement, Cervini said this:
“(Bohannon) was charged with 41 counts of criminal sexual penetration and sexual contact with a minor, and to get him on the sex-offender list, all Martinez would have had to do is get a conviction on one count of sexual contact. But instead of getting the job done, she cut a deal that gave this sex offender exactly what he wanted – a pass to stay off the sex offender registry. That’s plain wrong and a major failure on her part. These are exactly the types of offenders you count on your DA to get – particularly if that DA has made her entire candidacy for governor about her record of locking up bad guys.”
‘The toll… testifying can take on a sexual abuse victim’
So I asked the Martinez campaign why the cases were plea-bargained. Here’s what Campaign Manager Adam Deguire said:
“There weren’t one or two school sexual abuse cases, but a series of them that shook the Las Cruces community. Susana Martinez fought for the maximum penalty in each case that the facts and circumstances would allow, and the claim that she didn’t do her job is utterly false. Sadly, it doesn’t seem Denish understands all of the circumstances that surround these cases, such as the toll a criminal trial and testifying can take on a sexual abuse victim. All of these factors must be considered by prosecutors in working to achieve justice for victims and protecting our community. Had Denish simply checked court transcripts in the case she cites in her advertisement attacking Susana Martinez, she would have seen that the victims themselves supported the agreement.”
That’s true in the Bohannon case, according to a partial transcript the Martinez campaign provided. At the hearing on the plea bargain, Chief Deputy District Attorney Susan Reidel said Bohannon’s victims “are in agreement with entering the plea in this case and they understand the point behind that.” The attorney for the victims affirmed that.
Reidel said this about the reason for the plea bargain:
“…as we prepared for trial, all parties came to a realization that for the victims as well as the community of Hatch that this would be the best thing to get in this case, to resolve this before trial and not drag everyone through this.”
You can listen to audio of the mother of one of the victims explaining why she wanted a plea bargain here.
“I’m very thankful for this plea agreement because I did not want to see her have to go through all, relive all of this stuff again,” that mother said. “She’s kind of gotten past it. She just graduated. Life’s good again, you know, we’re moving on and so we want to move on. We don’t want to have to sit here and live in that past that we have had to live through for the last three years.”
In response to Denish’s ad, Martinez unveiled her own spot that also refers to the toll testifying takes on victims. Here’s the ad, which features Jessica, a victim in another of the cases that occurred around the same time as those featured in Denish’s ad:
“Diane Denish does not understand, to attack not only Susana on this, but in a way it’s attacking the victims,” Jessica says in the ad.
Shouldn’t campaigns have to substantiate claims?
The bottom line: Denish’s new ad makes a leap it doesn’t substantiate. The claim is also not proven in the fact sheet Denish’s campaign provided to accompany the ad, or in statements provided to me.
The Denish campaign seems to believe it’s appropriate to make an unsubstantiated allegation and place the burden on Martinez to prove it wrong. This is the sort of negative, spin-based campaigning I complained about last week when I blasted both campaigns.
Shouldn’t the burden be on campaigns to back up their attacks with facts?
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@sugar…..maybe you need to re-read Heath’s article again. How about the section he labeled “Sex offender registry not for ‘use as a plea bargain carrot’”
What part of that did you not understand? So do you believe that Susana should have forced and threatened victims to testify in order to meet the sex registry requirements? It’s a serious thing to get a perpetrator on that list because it will and should adversely affect his or her life forever. Here in the United States the accused deserve their day in court and to confront their accuser. You can’t be put on that list unless your accuser is willing to do it in court!!
What if you, sugar, were falsely accused of a sex crime? Should it be easy to put you on the sex registry list? I bet you will want your day in court to confront your accuser.
I work with victims at my church and I’d like you to spend 5 minutes with them and they will tell you how hard it is to go on with life, much less testify in court, after something this awful has happened. I’m talking about grade school kids and teens. Fragile human lives.
I am sickened everytime I see Diane Denish’s ad….saddened and sickened. Susana has worked very hard to comfort victims and their families and let them know she will do everything possible to get a conviction if they all are cooperative. No DA can do their job unless a victim cooperates. But Susana does this part of her job better than anyone.
Maybe someone can tell us when Diane has fought like that for us average New Mexicans? That’s a trait of a leader and a governor. Everyday I am more convinced that New Mexico needs Susana.
OK, a little education here. I wiil give you a hypothetical situation:
Sex offender violates victim. Victim is too young, mentally challenged, and/or too traumatized to be a good witness. Chances are that if the victim cannot testify, the predator will be acquitted and may not even be indicted by a grand jury.
Situation #1: Sex offender pleas to a lower count, getting jail time but, doesn’t have to register as a sex offender.
Situation #2: Sex offender is offered plea where he MUST register as a sex offender, gets more jail time. WHICH the sex offender balks at and says, “I’ll take my chances at trial.”
At trial the victim is too traumatized to be an effective witness and the sex offender is acquitted of all charges, therefore a guilty person goes scott free and does neither time nor has to register as a sex offrender.
Now, which would you choose if it were your child, sister, mother, or friend? I guess the Denish supporters would choose the latter so you could then bash Susana with not being able to get a conviction. I would choose number one. You critics need to learn about trying cases and the justice system before you open up with your opinions.
Susana Martinez should not allow child predators a plea bargain to avoid the sex offender registry.
The registry is to protect the public and at the very least, she should inform the public when she takes away one of our tools that keep us safe.
re: Genorichard
This isn’t about Martinez choosing to do what the mother wants to simply honor the mother’s wishes. If the victim is unwilling, or unable to testify, there is no case. That pesky constitution requires that the accused be able to confront and cross-examine his accuser. Except in extremely limited and unusual circumstances, it is impossible to bring a sex crimes case without the victim testifying, so had Martinez’s office pursued these cases, they would almost certainly have ended in acquittal, or more likely, would have been dismissed by the judge before the trial even started.
The only other option Martinez had was to force the victims to take the stand against their will under threat of jail time for failure to comply. In addition to the damage that would do to the victim, it would have a chilling effect on other victims coming forward to report these crimes in the first place.
Now that Diane Denish knows the facts, she should be asked whether or not she would have forced all of these victims to take the stand in order to pursue all of the charges. If not, her ad is hypocritical. If so, I suspect most voters would be appalled. Given her attack ad, it’s a fair question.
Okay, the mother of the victim is “thankful for the plea because I (the mother) did not want to see her(daughter) have to go through all, relive all of this stuff again”. Fine, but what about the parents of future victims, who are unaware of these plea bargain deals with these sexual predators. They (future victims) are out there uninformed, who is protecting them? Our prosecutors should not have the option of giving away(plea bargining) the public sex offender registry. Ask yourself were these defendents child predators/sexual offenders or not?
If Susana Martinez did not have a good case to take to trial and win, fine. She went forward and got what she could from these defendents, but do not blame Diane Denish for Susana’s lacking the goods, facts, tools to win the cases.
I think the larger question should be, do we really want a law enforcer to rule? As a Republican, she is likely to let the big moneyed interests and polluters and cronies slip under the law while she concentrates on persecuting regular working people and the powerless. What else does she know really? While it is true that there are terrible crimes, we can not allow our civil liberties to be rolled back for the sake of obsessive interdiction. The Republicans are trying to outlaw oral sex in Texas for Pete’s sake!
Susanna’s ideology is pro-growth for the prison industry while cutting taxes of the top richest and fanatically anti-regulation. She will let big energy rape NM aquifers. She will not advance clean up of past industrial and defense spoiling of NM lands and water.
Is she going to cut educational programs and after school care? Republicans cut AZ career and technical education by 99%.
Is she going to promote theocratic rule of our state appointing “spiritual warriors” ala Sarah Palin to our state agencies? Will she try to re-write history denying our Constitutional wall between church and state?
Does she believe that health care is a right or a privilege of the the rich?
What are her right-wing budget priorities?
As soon as Denish ran a negative ad the day after the primary, it was clear that she and her campaign expected Ms. Martinez to win. When the Martinez campaign suggested a break from negative campaigning and Denish refused, it was apparent that the Denish people already had ads backed up and did not want to waste them. How sad. Then if the Martinez campaing defends themselves, they are dragged into the nasty stuff, not necessarily by choice.
Great report! Denish doesn’t know the first thing about being a lawyer. I can’t wait for November, I have a feeling voters are going to see through Diane and see what a great Governor Susana will be!
Although I am aware of Mrs. Martinez’s background, I know very little of Mrs. Denish’s. I do know that she has been the Lt. Governor for almost 8 years, but thats about it. I have heard that she is a trust fund baby, but don’t know if there is any truth to that. She once said that she was a small business owner, but nobody has ever said what her business is or was, or what she did during her first fifty-plus years prior to becoming a politician .
Unless Denish has first hand knowledge of what it takes to investigate or prosecute a case, especially one as sensitive as a child abuse or molestation, I would strongly suggest that she refrain from such attacks. In an era when child molestation seems to be making headlines much more often than anyone would have expected, great care needs to be taken before making these horrendous allegations.
We all knew that Brian Colon and Mary Herrera would be detrimental to Denish’s campaign, but she seems to be inflicting much of the same upon herself.
Kudos to you Heath. This is excellent reporting of the truth. Denish is clutching at straws and hopes to turn the spotlight on something derogatory that is not part of her poor background. She is just eight years too late.
“Diane isn’t a lawyer…” nuff said. She and her campaign don’t know what they’re talking about, her words from her speech on primary election night is reflecting her own campaign, not Susana’s…Instead of saying “they will say and do ANYTHING to win…” she should have said, “I will say and do ANYTHING to win.” Denish probably wishes these plea deals hadn’t have been cut so the offenders could have been acquitted and been able to vote for her in November. She has the morals and ethics of the governor she has served for eight years.