July 17—The Bernalillo County district attorney on Wednesday asked lawmakers to make it easier to keep violent youths behind bars, insisting that current law makes it difficult to hold even dangerous youths accountable until they kill someone.
“The juvenile criminal justice system in New Mexico is broken,” Second Judicial District Attorney Sam Bregman told the Legislature’s Courts, Corrections and Justice Committee. “I don’t say this lightly, nor do I blame anyone or any branch of government.”
Bregman and Assistant District Attorney Troy Gray shared statistics and stories about youth arrests for violent crimes and asked lawmakers to consider changes to the code that they said would make it easier to hold young perpetrators accountable for their actions.
“Today, a 15-year-old could be driving with his friends in a stolen car with 10 fentanyl pills and an AR-15” and likely not spend a single night in the Bernalillo County Juvenile Detention Center, Bregman said.
“This young man will face little to no consequences,” Bregman continued. “And they know it.”
Bregman’s presentation came one day before the start of a special session of the Legislature focusing on public safety. He specified at the beginning of his presentation that he expected lawmakers to consider his ideas during the regular 60-day legislative session that begins in January. In response to a question from Sen. Greg NibertR-Roswell, Bregman said he doesn’t expect juvenile justice to come up during the special session.
“I’m not aware at this point that anything about juvenile justice is contemplated,” he said.
“I think we would find some sympathetic legislators who would be willing to do that and more,” Nibert responded. “I come from a city that is quite violent when it comes to juvenile crime, and we are not immune to that, even though we are not Albuquerque. And we saw what you described and we have to get this under control.”
House and Senate Democratic leaders have expressed displeasure with the proposed special session, saying there is no agreement on the measures Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham hopes to pass. Her office said earlier this week that she plans to move forward, accusing lawmakers of not doing their jobs.
Some Democrats signaled during Wednesday morning’s meeting that they have doubts about the governor’s proposal to make it a second-degree crime for a felon to possess a firearm. While Sen. Moe Maestas, D-Albuqerque, discussed how there are contradictions in the state law because it was historically written in a piecemeal fashion, he said “the governor’s proposal on firearm ownership doesn’t fit” with other parts of the code.
The committee chairwoman, Rep. Christine Chandler, D-Los Alamos, quickly interrupted him. Near the end of the meeting, the committee’s vice chairman, Sen. Joe Cervantes, D-Las Cruces, noted in a series of questions directed at Bregman that increasing the sentence for felons in possession of a gun would lead to harsher punishments for that crime. . than second-degree murder.
Bregman said there are now 61 children in the juvenile detention center, more than 90% of whom are charged with gun crimes and half are charged with homicide. In his 18 months leading the prosecutor’s office in the state’s most populous county, Bregman said he has prosecuted 319 cases involving a young person committing a crime with a gun and indicted 20 young men for murder — all but one facing a first-degree charge. degree.
“I believe this is absolutely unacceptable – not the fact that my office indicted them, but the fact that 19 children were charged with first-degree murder and 20 lives were lost because of them,” Bregman said.
Bregman and Gray asked lawmakers to consider a series of changes to the code, including automatically treating teenagers between the ages of 14 and 18 as “serious juvenile offenders” if they are charged with first-degree murder and adding some other serious violent crimes, such as manslaughter, criminal sexual penetration and armed robbery with a firearm to the serious young offender status.
They also want the law changed so that young offenders are automatically transferred to an adult prison when they turn 18 and to make it easier for prosecutors to use juvenile records during release hearings.
Prosecutors said they want to extend the period of possible supervision for juvenile offenses to age 25 instead of 21 and make it a fourth-degree felony rather than a misdemeanor for someone under 19 to carry a gun. It’s a change they say will at least require district attorneys to review these cases. Currently, juvenile probation and parole can delay misdemeanor charges before they reach the prosecutor.
Bregman also wants the law prohibiting firearm ownership by those under 19 to be expanded to cover all firearms, including long guns. Currently, he said, possession of an AR-15 or AK-47 by a minor is not necessarily illegal.
While most lawmakers who spoke appeared to broadly support Bregman’s ideas, some Democrats appeared more cautious about the idea of increasing criminal penalties for children. Rep. Micaela Lara Cadena, D-Mesilla, called for “a fuller, richer, deeper conversation about how New Mexico ends up in a moment like this,” noting that the state’s violent colonial history has affected current conditions.
“Those children we are raising — we fail them over and over again,” she said.
