By Phaedra Haywood
The Santa Fe New Mexican
SANTA FE, N.M. — Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham says a petition asking the state Supreme Court to force her to release hundreds of inmates to prevent a potential COVID-19 outbreak in New Mexico prisons fails because it doesn’t state a legal duty she has breached that would make it appropriate for the court to order her to action.
The governor also argues she has taken sufficient steps to reduce the threat of the virus to inmates, and merely keeping them incarcerated during the pandemic does not amount to cruel and unusual punishment as claimed by American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico and the statewide Law Offices of the Public Defender in their April 14 petition.
“Petitioners must prove the Governor has committed constitutional violations,” Lujan Grisham’s attorney, Matt Garcia, wrote in his 45-page response filed Thursday. “They are obligated to show that inmates face a substantial risk of serious harm, and that the Governor was deliberately indifferent to that risk.”
Garcia’s response says what the plaintiffs are asking — for the New Mexico Supreme Court to order the governor to work with Corrections Department to release of about a third of the state’s nearly 7,000 inmates — violates separation-of-power provisions.
The ACLU has been calling for the release of inmates since the virus began infecting prisoners across the country a few months ago.
Lujan Grisham issued an executive order April 6 that directed the Corrections Department to begin a rolling release of a very narrow category of inmates who were within 30 days of release. The order resulted in a slow trickle of releases — just under two dozen inmates over the past two weeks — that the ACLU-NM has said will have little to no impact in reducing the possibility a state prison could become overrun with the virus.
No prison employees or inmates had tested positive for the virus as of Thursday, according to the governor’s response.
The New Mexico Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the case May 4.
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