By Scott Sandlin
Albuquerque Journal
ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico — Bernalillo County on Tuesday asked the judge overseeing a class action lawsuit over jail conditions to recuse herself - a move the county acknowledges is both serious and rare.
The county contends Chief U.S. District Judge Martha Vázquez has “prejudged” issues involving inmate rights and reached her conclusions by independently investigating or having her staff gather evidence from individuals, including “a high-ranking county official.”
Vázquez also has a conf lict because her husband’s sister has been incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center at least four times, making the sister-in-law a member of the inmate class covered by the lawsuit, according to the motion.
Vázquez said Wednesday that she is reviewing the 25-page motion and accompanying 30 exhibits. She said she could rule by the end of next week, but otherwise declined comment.
The federal code says judges must disqualify themselves when their impartiality might reasonably be questioned, or when the judge has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party or has personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts. It also specifies recusal if the judge or the judge’s spouse “or a person within the third degree of relationship to either of them” is a party to the proceeding.
Recusal motions are hard to win. It is up to the judge to decide whether the motion has merit.
According to the motion, Vázquez and her husband, Española Mayor Joseph Maestas, visited his sister once in 2007 under circumstances not permitted for the public, absent extraordinary circumstances.
Jail director Ron Torres decided it was extraordinary to have a sitting federal judge visiting an inmate, the county motion says, and told his staff to take the judge and her husband immediately to visit the inmate. Vázquez and Maestas visited his sister in the infirmary for about 30 minutes before leaving.
In an affidavit, Torres says he knew Vázquez was the inmate’s sister-in-law because Torres’ wife volunteered for Maestas’ mayoral campaign.
The county’s request was filed on the heels of the judge’s March 31 order withdrawing her approval of two 2005 settlement agreements. The county says that it is asking her to disqualify herself based on the circumstances and the law, and that the recusal request is not a tactical move.
At least one of the inmate attorneys disagreed. Peter Cubra, who represents inmates with mental health problems, noted that the county waited two years to complain about Vázquez’s jail visit.
“It cannot be a coincidence that they filed a motion right after a ruling they did not like. Their motion has no merit,” he said.
The so-called McClendon class action lawsuit was prompted by allegations of crowding and constitutional violations stemming from the crowding at the jail. Major parts of the lawsuits, such as governing operations, medical conditions and mental health care, were settled a decade later, but the agreements applied only to the huge, new West Side facility. The jail was completed in 2003 and is supposed to house 2,236 inmates but typically houses 2,600 to 2,700.
Downtown jail
The settlement agreements outlined steps by which the litigation could be resolved - with auditors judging progress and signing off on compliance. The reopening of the old Downtown jail as a federal contract facility, however, created a new set of problems.
The county contracted with the federal government to house federal detainees at what was renamed the Regional Corrections Center and hired Cornell Corrections to operate it. But Vázquez, in a 22-page order rescinding her previous approval of the settlements, said the court essentially was blindsided by the fact that it was the county that was the contractor on the Downtown jail.
She said the county “perpetuated the misimpression that Cornell was the party to the contract with the federal government,” and that was significant because it meant hundreds of inmates were excluded from the settlement.
The county says Vázquez’s comments in her March 31 order “show she has prejudged a fundamental issue in this case: whether the inmates or detainees in the RCC are being afforded fundamental civil rights while incarcerated.”
Inmate lawyers have 15 days to file a response.
Copyright 2009 Albuquerque Journal