State & Federal
New Mexico
Famous Cases
Santa Rosa prison riots: Ralph Garcia, a correctional officer, was killed during a prison riot in 1999. Thirteen men were charged in the murder, but eleven of those cases were resolved through plea deals. Robert Young and Reis Lopez were charged with capital murder, but the New Mexico Supreme Court suspended proceedings because the state has not provided sufficient funds for their defense. The cases continued when prosecutors stopped seeking the death penalty. Lopez pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 29 years in prison. Young was convicted of felony murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Notable Exonerations
The Vagos Bikers case: Four men were arrested and charged in 1974 for the kidnapping, murder and rape of a University of New Mexico student, William Velten. They were released in 1975 after the real murderer confessed.
Milestones in Abolition/Reinstatement
In 1986, Governor Toney Anaya commuted the death sentences of all five men on New Mexico’s death row.
In 2009, New Mexico became the 15th state to abolish the death penalty. The bill applied only prospectively, leaving two men on death row. On June 28, 2019, the New Mexico Supreme Court vacated their death sentences and ordered that they be resentenced to life in prison.
New Mexico “Firsts”
New Mexico has excluded juveniles from execution since 1975, making it one of the first states to do so.
Other Interesting Facts
New Mexico was the last state to adopt a sentence of life without parole, in 2009.
New Mexico Execution Totals Since 1976
News & Developments
News
Mar 19, 2024
The 15th Anniversary of Death Penalty Repeal in New Mexico: Conversation with Cathy Ansheles and Viki Harrison
This week marks the 15th anniversary of the repeal of the death penalty in New Mexico. On March 18th, 2009, Governor Bill Richardson signed the repeal act (HB2085), ending the death penalty in the state. The bill came into force on July 1st, 2009. New Mexico followed New Jersey to become the second state in the 21st Century to end capital punishment through legislative means.
Read MoreDec 23, 2019
DPIC Analysis: Death Penalty Erosion Spreads Across the Western United States in 2019
In a year of declining death-penalty usage across the United States, nowhere was the erosion of capital punishment as sustained and pronounced in 2019 as it was in the western United States. Continuing a wave of momentum from Washington’s judicial abolition of capital punishment in October 2018, one state halted executions and dismantled its death chamber, another cleared its death row, two cut back on the circumstances in which the death penalty could be sought and imposed, and the entire region set record lows for new death sentences and executions.
Read MoreJul 02, 2019
New Mexico Supreme Court Ruling Removes Final Prisoners from State’s Death Row
The New Mexico Supreme Court has cleared the state’s death row, vacating the death sentences imposed on the state’s final two death-row prisoners, and directing that they be resentenced to life in prison. The rulings, issued by a divided court on June 28, 2019 in the cases of Timothy Allen (pictured, left) and Robert Fry (pictured, right), came almost ten years to the day after New Mexico’s death-penalty abolition, signed into law by Governor Bill Richardson, took effect. However, the 2009 legislation applied only to future cases, leaving intact the…
Read MoreNov 28, 2018
Two Cases Pit Native American Sovereignty Against U.S. Death Penalty
As federal prosecutors dropped the death penalty against a Navajo man accused of killing a police officer on Navajo land, the U.S. Supreme Court heard argument in a separate case on the status of a treaty establishing the borders of the Creek Nation reservation that could determine whether Oklahoma has jurisdiction to carry out the death penalty against a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) tribe. The two cases highlight issues of Native American tribal sovereignty with potentially profound implications for the administration of capital punishment under state and federal death…
Read MoreApr 11, 2018
New Mexico Supreme Court Hears Argument on Whether State May Execute Last Two Men on Its Death Row
Nine years after New Mexico prospectively abolished capital punishment, lawyers for the state’s two remaining death-row prisoners argued to the New Mexico Supreme Court that the death penalty was unconstitutionally disproportionate punishment as applied to Timothy Allen (pictured, left) and Robert Fry (pictured, right), and that they should not be executed.
Read MoreMar 09, 2018
Attempts Both to Repeal and to Restore Death-Penalty Statutes Fail in Legislatures Across the Country
In Washington and Utah, bipartisan or Republican-led efforts at death-penalty repeal fell short, a month after death-penalty proponents abandoned efforts to reinstate capital punishment in New Mexico and Iowa. In Washington, a bipartisan push to replace the death penalty with life without possibility of release was introduced at the request of Democratic Attorney General Bob Ferguson with the support of his Republican predecessor Rob McKenna, Democratic Governor Jay Inslee, and King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg, a Republican from the state’s largest county. With key votes from five Republican senators, SB…
Read MoreFeb 06, 2018
New Mexico Bill to Restore Death Penalty Dies in Committee
The latest effort by death-penalty proponents to reinstate the death penalty in New Mexico has died in a House committee. House Bill 155, which would have brought back the death penalty for murders of children, police officers, and corrections employees, was tabled by the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee by a 3 – 2 vote following a Saturday hearing on the bill on February 3, 2018. The bill, introduced by Albuquerque Rep. Monica C. Youngblood, was the fifth and, according to news reports, likely the final attempt under Gov. Susana Martinez…
Read MoreJan 12, 2018
Experience Shows No “Parade of Horribles” Following Abolition of the Death Penalty
States that have recently abolished the death penalty have not experienced the “parade of horribles” — including increased murder rates — predicted by death-penalty proponents, according to death-penalty experts who participated in a panel discussion at the 2017 American Bar Association national meeting in New York City. Instead, the panelists said, abolition appears to have created opportunities to move forward with other broader criminal justice reforms.
Read MoreJun 16, 2017
Former Governor Bill Richardson: Death Penalty Is Bad for Business, Out of Step With World’s Views
In a Washington Post op-ed, former New Mexico Governor and United Nations Ambassador Bill Richardson (pictured) — who in 2009 signed a bill to abolish his state’s death penalty — urged that capital punishment be abolished in the United States, saying “[t]he practice is wrong and I hope it isn’t long for this world.”
Read MoreNov 19, 2014
EDITORIALS: Maryland Governor Should Commute Remaining Death Sentences
In a recent editorial, the Washington Post urged Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley to commute the sentences of the four men remaining on the state’s death row, saying, “To carry out executions post-repeal would be both cruel, because the legislation underpinning the sentence has been scrapped, and unusual, because doing so would be historically unprecedented.” Maryland is one of three states that have repealed the death penalty prospectively but still have inmates on death row. The others are Connecticut and New Mexico. O’Malley, who is leaving office in January, was a…
Read MoreDec 30, 2013
COSTS: “Pursuing Death Penalty is Big Waste of Resources”
In a recent op-ed in the Albuquerque Journal, the president of the New Mexico Criminal Defense Lawyers Association discussed the high costs of the federal death penalty. In particular, Barbara Mandel detailed the expenses involved in the recent federal trial of John McCluskey. He was sentenced to life without parole, an outcome that Mandel wrote, “occurred years and at least a million dollars later than it should have.” According to the op-ed, McCluskey had been willing to plead guilty in exchange for a sentence less than death early on, and,…
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