AG wants mom-killer off streets

Once considered incompetent to stand trial, Quintana could be let out today from mental hospital

New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas wouldn’t comment earlier this month about a state mental hospital’s planned release of a man with schizophrenia who shot and killed his mother nine years ago.

But on Saturday, Balderas’ office made a lastminute plea to keep 35-year-old Justin Quintana in the New Mexico Behavioral Health Institute in Las Vegas, N.M., where he was first admitted in 2008.

Quintana was set to be released Sunday, said Balderas’ spokesman, James Hallinan.

In a letter to state Health Secretary Lynn Gallagher, Deputy Attorney General Sharon Pino said the office fears Quintana still poses a threat to the community and urged the Department of Health to “exercise its statutory authority to evaluate whether a petition of extended commitment is appropriate.”

It was unclear Saturday how Gallagher would respond to Pino’s request. In an email, Health Department spokesman Paul Rhien said the agency was responding to the letter but was limited in what it could say publicly by federal patient privacy laws, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, better known as HIPAA.

Quintana killed his mother, Santa Fe native and New Mexico State Police Officer Susan Kuchma, in December 2007 in Las Cruces. He admitted to the killing but was found incompetent to stand to trial because of his mental illness. In the meantime, he had been held in the mental hospital.

Last summer, Quintana’s doctors found him competent for the court case to proceed.

His attorney and a prosecutor were concerned that he still posed a danger, however, and instead reached a plea deal that declared Quintana not guilty of first-degree murder by reason of insanity. The plea bargain said Quintana should be kept in the Behavioral Health Institute “until he is sane or no longer dangerous as defined by New Mexico law.”

A month later, a Health Department attorney petitioned the state Supreme Court to overturn the deal, saying there was no basis in state law for keeping an acquitted defendant held in the institution indefinitely. The court agreed in January and ordered Quintana’s release.

The District Attorney’s Office in Las Cruces can pursue a civil commitment for Quintana, but it must show evidence that he is at risk of serious harm to himself or others. And to do that, it needs the Health Department’s help. Because the agency oversees the Behavioral Health Institute, Pino’s letter said, it “bears responsibility for any petition seeking extended commitment.”

“We are deeply concerned that, to date, the Department of Health has not requested our assistance or provided us with any records that would allow us to assist the Department in pursuing an extended commitment,” Pino said.

“Because the Department has not consulted us in this matter,” she added, “I can only pray that any arrangements made for the treatment of Mr. Quintana are appropriate and sufficient. Rest assured that if any danger to the public went unaddressed, the Office of the Attorney General will be zealous in pursuing accountability.”

Pino’s letter sheds some light on an issue that has been shielded, with officials citing privacy

laws. Earlier this month, neither the district attorney in Las Cruces nor the attorney general would comment on whether Quintana actually had been released or when the release might happen.

Even Kuchma’s husband, Patrick Kuchma, said he had not been informed of when Quintana would be returning to the community.

Asked whether the district attorney was seeking to have Quintana civilly committed, a spokesman with the office said such cases are sealed, so he couldn’t comment on that, either.

Pino’s letter suggests the office has sought such a process.

Quintana’s possible release has raised public safety concerns since the Supreme Court overturned his plea deal last month. Patrick Kuchma also is concerned about Quintana’s own well-being.

“I’m quite concerned whether he’ll continue taking his medications,” Kuchma told The New Mexican a couple of weeks ago, as he awaited word on when Quintana might be released. “… I’m very concerned he’ll be let out on the street with no supervision.”

On Saturday, Kuchma said he was aware Quintana was expected to be released over the weekend. “That’s interesting that Mr. Balderas’ office is trying to intervene,” he said. “I don’t have high hopes.”

He had been told by a family member Saturday that instead of returning to Las Cruces, Quintana would be taken to a halfway house in Albuquerque, Kuchma said, which he thought was a better plan, though he said he felt an oversight strategy for the troubled man was still vague.

And he continued to disagree with the court’s decision to allow Quintana’s release.

His wife’s son doesn’t like to take his medication, Kuchma said, and turned on his mother with deadly results when she tried to persuade him to stay on the treatment regimen.

If Quintana doesn’t take his medication after his release, Kuchma said, “he could very possibly do this to someone else.”

In his email Saturday evening, Rhien defended the department’s decision to challenge the plea deal that could have kept Quintana in the Behavioral Health Institute for decades.

“With this case, the Supreme Court ruled the defendant was placed at our facility in a way that did not adhere to the rule of law,” Rhien said. “We cannot hold an individual without lawful authority.”

Kuchma understands the situation is complicated. “This all boils down to the law,” he said, “or, I should say, the lack of it.”