State couldn’t fund death penalty trial
By SCOTT SANDLIN
Albuquerque Journal
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — One of two remaining prisoners once facing capital murder charges in the death of a Santa Rosa prison officer pleaded guilty Thursday to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 29 years in prison.
The plea agreement involving Reis Lopez, 31, resolved charges stemming from the Aug. 31, 1999, prison uprising that led to the death of Ralph Garcia.
Nine years in the making, it took less than half an hour under tight security for the plea to be entered before District Judge Neil Candelaria. Eight corrections officers or deputy sheriffs flanked Lopez in the courtroom.
Garcia’s family did not appear, although Assistant Attorney General Francisco Prieto said his widow and brother had been notified.
The case was charged as a death penalty case against three defendants, but capital punishment came off the table in March when the state failed to come up with enough money to pay defendants’ attorneys.
Parties began negotiations that resulted in the plea.
Besides second-degree murder, Lopez pleaded guilty to the aggravated battery of prisoner Adrian Mares during the same event and to unlawful assault on a jail. With habitual offender provisions tacked on from convictions in 1996 and 1998 for possession of a deadly weapon by a prisoner, the 21-year sentence was lengthened to 29 years.
Lopez has served 15 years of a life sentence for a murder conviction in Los Lunas when he was 17 years old. He is seeking to overturn that conviction.
“It was a reasonable way to resolve a difficult case,” attorney Jacquelyn Robins, who has represented Lopez since the case was indicted in 2000, said of the plea.
Robert Young, another prisoner who faced the death penalty until the March resolution, is scheduled for trial in November.
Copyright 2008 Albuquerque Journal