Martinez campaign manager Ryan Cangiolosi, who worked as executive director of the Republican Party of New Mexico before signing onto Martinez’s campaign, told the Journal that Shah was “immediately terminated.”

According to the New Mexico Department of Public Safety website, “Aggravated DWI includes driving with an alcohol level of .16% or greater, causing bodily injury while DWI, or refusing to submit to a chemical test while DWI.”

Shah had come from the campaign of Rob Simmons, a Connecticut Republican who was running for Senate.

The court ruling will require prosecutors to sift through the facts of cases with a closer eye apparently. The New Mexican provides an example to illustrate how the ruling will affect prosecutions.

Before the ruling “an intoxicated driver found in a car that wasn’t moving could be cited and convicted for driving while intoxicated simply because the driver might have driven the car,” the paper says. The court’s ruling will now require prosecutors to prove “the driver ‘was actually, not just potentially, exercising control over the vehicle, and … the defendant had the general intent to drive.’ “

Santa Fe District Attorney Angela “Spence” Pacheco tells the New Mexican that in a case like that the new threshold could make prosecution tougher.

“(Before) it was a little more automatic if the person was in the car,” Pacheco said. “Now we have to figure out intent, and sometimes we have that information and sometimes we don’t.”

A call to Martinez’ campaign has not yet been returned.

The sheriffs pointed to records from the New Mexico Administrative Office of the Courts, showing that Martinez has accepted plea bargains from more than 1,000 felony DWI offenders, despite a 2004 promise.

In 2004, then candidate Martinez said that “We will not plea bargain a DWI case” and went on to say “We don’t pretend it is a first or second offense just to move the court docket along.” [Las Cruces Sun-News, 9/5/04]

The Democratic party of New Mexico, which organized the event, released these statements from the sheriffs:

Rio Arriba Sheriff Joe Mascarenas: “Maybe some politicians break campaign pledges and think nothing of it, but a broken promise on something as serious as felony DWI offenders is simply not forgivable. Susana Martinez should explain why she broke her campaign promise and gave these dangerous felons a pass.”

Santa Fe County Sheriff Greg Solano: “Susana Martinez is running as a tough prosecutor, but a quick look at her record shows that she’s been misleading the voters.  As a Sheriff, I see the death and tragedy caused by DWIs every day, so I know we need a Governor who takes these felony offenses seriously.”

“We need a Governor who is committed to being tough on DWI offenders, not a politician who says she’ll be tough and then turns around and lets more than 1,000 repeat offenders take the easy way out.  It’s clear that Susana Martinez is all hat, no cattle.” said Rene Rivera, Valencia County Sheriff.

The party also provided the following document from the Administrative Office of the Courts:

Martinez DWI records

The proposal that attracted the most debate began the legislative session as two bills — Senate Bill 3 and Senate Bill 5, which were combined into one, called a committee substitute.

The bills would include minimum sentencing for first-time offenders, something that the law does not currently allow for, and a minimum three day jail sentence or 30 days of electronic monitoring and fines.

“I was encouraged, I think it was a good hearing,” Wirth told The Independent. “I think it was a fair presentation of both sides and the combination of the two bills works better so we’ve really created an alternative to the mandatory incarceration.”

Sen. George Munoz, D-Gallup, said the legislation would result in those who could afford the fines and electronic monitoring would opt to use that, while those with less money would be forced to go to jail.

Wirth said that the bill is necessary to stop first-time offenders from breaking the law multiple times.

“If we can reduce that by 25 percent, there’s a huge savings to the system. So that’s the hard piece of a bill like this to measure what the cost of the bill is,” he said.

Senators on the Public Affairs Committee were concerned with the price tag of the plan. Legislative analysts have not yet done a fiscal impact report on the committee substitute.

The other bill, Senate Bill 4, would amend laws that Wirth says include loopholes for those who refuse to take a breathalyzer or blood test when pulled over and suspected of a DWI.

The bill would change the law to say “no other disposition by plea of guilty to any other charge in satisfaction of the charge shall be authorized if…the person refuses to submit to a chemical test authorized by the Implied Consent Act.”

Wirth said that in some case’s those who refuse a blood test have been able to plea down to a lesser charge.

Cravens

Sen. Kent Cravens, a Republican from Albuquerque, announced yesterday that he will join the race for lieutenant governor, the AP reports. He joins a field already crowded with nearly a dozen other candidates, mostly Democrats. Cravens has become known for his work on DWI laws since four of his relatives were killed by drunk driver Gordon House on Dec. 24, 1992.

New Mexico is now officially not one of the 10 states with the highest rates of drunken driving fatalities, Gov. Bill Richardson announced Friday.

According to new statistics released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, New Mexico had the 11th highest rate of DWI fatalities per 100,000 people in 2008, a news release from the governor’s office states.

In 2006 and 2007, New Mexico was ninth.

The state once had one of the worst DWI fatality rates in the nation.

“We have all worked very hard to keep drunk drivers off our streets, and these rankings reflect the progress we’ve made,” Richardson said. “This success can be attributed to our comprehensive and aggressive efforts to stop these tragic deaths.”

You can get more details here.

But an article two months ago from the Santa Fe Reporter says otherwise.

The Los Angeles Times writes:

New Mexico, home to high rates of alcohol abuse and miles and miles of open road, is now ranked 25th among the states in alcohol-related fatal crash rates and is expected to place lower when the latest rankings are compiled later this year. Between 2004 and 2008, the number of DWI [Driving While Intoxicated] fatalities here dropped 35%, from 219 to 143.

However, the Santa Fe Reporter pointed out that these numbers have a lot to do with high gas prices (less driving), safer cars (airbags) and better driving habits (seatbelt use) than any actual anti-DWI program.

Still, New Mexico is being hailed around the country for the use of ignition interlocks to help stop drunk driving.

However, the attitudes when it comes to drunk driving are the hardest things to change. Both articles mention the “culture” in New Mexico when it comes to drinking.

The LA Times:

Kenny Martinez, 43, agrees that alcohol is a part of New Mexican culture. Martinez was first convicted of drunk driving in 1992 and racked up four more convictions over 15 years.”When someone’s born, we drink. When someone dies, we drink,” he said. “We drink at baptismals, at birthdays. Oh, work’s off, let’s drink!”

The Santa Fe Reporter:

“I have mixed feelings,” DWI Czar O’Connor says. She thinks safe-ride programs, while probably effective in cities, are no substitute for keeping people sober: “You can’t serve somebody as much as you feel like [just because] they have a safe ride.”This attitude is revealing. Because when anti-drunk driving activists talk about “changing the culture,” they often mean promoting alcoholic abstinence.

America tried that before. “Prohibition didn’t work. We have to look at how we use alcohol,” Santa Fe Sobering Center Manager Richard Lucero says. In Europe, he notes, alcohol is “a family ritual at dinnertime, where teenagers are introduced to alcohol, and they use it responsibly.”

So are there any easy answers to solving the DWI problem in New Mexico? Probably not — or they would have been done already.

One letter pointed out that Sweden has a 0.02 blood alcohol limit, and suggested that our limit of 0.08 should be reduced to that level. Another noted approvingly that in Norway a first conviction gets a drunk driver a month at hard labor the loss of driver’s license for a year, and a second conviction results in a year at hard labor and loss of driver’s license for life.

But lowering the legal blood alcohol limit would not solve the problem. What it would do is turn everyone who has a single glass of wine at dinner and then drives home into a criminal. People with 0.02 blood alcohol levels do not drive the wrong way on the interstate and kill five people.

Dana Papst’s blood alcohol level was four times the legal limit. That’s 0.32 — a level so dangerously high it can kill a person.  It doesn’t kill a hardened drinker, however, who has built up a tolerance to that level of alcohol poisoning, and instead of dropping dead staggers to his car and ruins a family’s life.

When Micah Henry killed two people in Albuquerque a year and a half ago, his blood alcohol level was 0.16, twice the legal limit. The overwhelming number of drunk driving fatalities involve people with levels far above the legal limit. On Monday, the Santa Fe DA’s office released the blood test results for Scott Owens, and not surprisingly, a .16 level of intoxication was revealed.

Though I do not believe the blood alcohol limit should be lowered, I do believe that sentences should be much higher than they are.  When I looked up the sentencing minimums and maximums on the New Mexico Department of Transportation’s Web site, I was stunned almost speechless by how light the sentences were:

A first offense carries a minimum sentence of 48 hours and a maximum of 90 days. For a second offense, 96 hours to 364 days. The third time gets you 30 to 364 days, the fourth 6 to 18 months, the fifth 1 to 2 years, the sixth 18 to 30 months, and the seventh 2 to 3 years.

Are they kidding?

Someone convicted of driving drunk seven times can be incarcerated for a maximum of three years? Anyone who is caught and convicted of endangering the lives and limbs of his fellow New Mexicans seven times ought to be locked up and have the key thrown away.

I’d be in favor of a life sentence for the fifth conviction, maybe even the fourth. And the third certainly ought to get you a lot more than a single year minus a day — especially if you’re at double or triple the legal limit.

Those sentencing guidelines need to be revised, and revised immediately. Repeat drunk drivers, the kind who routinely drive with blood alcohol levels well above the legal limit, need to be taken off the streets, and kept off.

Criminalizing the behavior of social drinkers who occasionally drive after one drink or two isn’t going to keep New Mexicans safe from chronic alcoholics weaving all over Old Las Vegas Highway or driving the wrong direction on the interstate.  Locking up people with blood alcohol levels of 0.02 and 0.03 is not going to save lives. We do not need more laws that reasonable people think are ridiculous. We do not need to foster still more contempt for the laws than people already have.

But we do need tougher sentencing laws. If narcissistic drunks who value their own momentary pleasure above the lives of other people are sitting in prison, they can’t kill anyone.

The test result: Owens blood alcohol concentration was .16, or twice the legal limit.

Meanwhile, Avree Koffman, the 16-year-old surviving driver of the car in which four teenagers died, had no alcohol in her system, according to the tests.

Last week, Santa Fe Mayor David Coss announced that the City Council and the Santa Fe County Board of Commissioners would meet Wednesday, July 8 to talk specifically about drunk driving. For more on the case, and Santa Fe’s reaction to the tragedy, check out SFReeper.com.