NM: recognizing the signs
Been there...
Public defender considering leaving desk for more time at defense table
Canon Stevens' passion is the courtroom.
Her frustration, she said, is the rampant bureaucracy that goes on before she even walks through the doors of justice -- wrangling that keeps her juggling far more paperwork than any caseload schedule.
It's why Stevens is considering stepping aside from her administrative duties as the 12th Judicial District public defender. She wants to spend more time defending.
In an office with over 600 clients per lawyer, this could be trading one set of overwhelming frustrations for another. I feel for this colleague and her personal search...
"Three years ago, Stevens left the district attorney's office to return to public defense, hoping the change would give her more time for a life."
... but in a trajectory from line p.d. through capital defense, through switching sides and prosecuting murderers, to switching back and managing a p.d. office, with a pause to briefly consider working in Baghdad, a change in job title alone won't fill the space. Trust me on this one.
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In the fall of 2002, New Mexico State Highway Patrol officer Robert Carrejo killed two innocent people. He was speeding at night without his overhead lights and without his siren. He was not answering a call. He was going nearly twice the speed limit and killed two college students by ramming into the side of the car in which they were passengers. The next morning the news media reported that the students' car had run into Officer Carrejo while showing film that clearly showed the side of the victims' car caved in and thrown entirely across the intersection and the nose of Robert Carrejo's official Crown Vic caved in. This report was no doubt fed to the media by the NM State Highway Patrol in a panicky moment. Gosh, one of our guys killed two people while speeding without lights or siren. Think of the negative publicity if we told the truth.
Officer Carrejo was given three days suspension and put back on the job while an investigation was conducted by the then Assistant District Attorney in Alamogordo, Canon Stevens.
Carrejo is still on the job. This does not inspire any kind of trust in either the New Mexico State Highway Patrol or in any District Attorney's office, particularly Alamogordo's, as represented at that time by Canon Stevens. She found that there should be no charges filed against the officer. According to her report, he had the white lights that flash under his headlights on before the accident. Yet one witness reported that they themselves almost pulled out in front of him from a parking lot because there were no warning lights or sirens and they had no idea of his rate of speed. Other witnesses at the scene of the accident reported hearing no sirens or seeing no warning lights of any kind. Officer Carrejo was clearly guilty of killing two innocent people, but he escaped justice because Canon Stevens chose to serve the guilty, instead of the innocent. God knows if an ordinary person without the uniform, the gun, the badge, the fast car, and the franchise to kill innocent citizens had done what Robert Carrejo had done, Cannon Stevens would have certainly recommended that charges be pressed. But she played footsie with another state agency and justice went by the way.
It is a good thing she is no longer working for a District Attorney's office. It's questionable whether she should be overseeing or even performing as a public defender. She certainly displayed no interest in defending the public interest against a guilty state law enforcement officer in 2002, and who knows how many other times she has helped hide the facts or sweep something out of sight if it wasn't convenient for the guilty to be charged.
Perhaps she should open her own law office and practice some other type of law where she does not get a chance to mangle life and death matters on behalf of the State of New Mexico.
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