Delays lead judge to toss Nambé murder case
Defendant Mondrian-Powell has been in custody since his arrest 20 months ago
Astate district judge on Friday dismissed the murder case against Robert Mondrian-Powell, accused of slaying former Santa Fe librarian Elvira Segura in the Nambé home they shared.
The judge tossed the case on the grounds that the state violated the accused killer’s right to a speedy trial.
Police have said that Mondrian-Powell, 59, confessed to shooting Segura, 67, but her body was so badly decomposed when it was found in the home’s bathroom in September 2016 that the state Office of the Medical Investigator was unable to determine the cause of death.
Mondrian-Powell had been in custody since his arrest about 20 months ago while the judge granted multiple continuances in the case.
District Judge T. Glenn Ellington said during Friday’s court hearing that turnover in both the District Attorney’s Office and at the Law Offices of the Public Defender had contributed to the delays.
He said at least three attorneys and as many as five different prosecutors had been assigned to work on the case over the past 20 months.
The judge also said an ongoing problematic relationship between prosecutors and the defense had created issues with the Mondrian-Powell case and ultimately did a disservice to all of the residents of the First Judicial District and defendants appearing before the court.
Ellington said the situation had violated Mondrian-Powell’s constitutional rights to due process and a speedy trial. He ordered Mondrian-Powell set free.
Asked if she thought Mondrian-Powell had killed Segura, Public Defender Jennifer J. Burrill on Friday said she did not. She added that the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator had listed two other possible causes of death for Segura, including a heart attack and ingestion of a deadly combination of rubbing alcohol and amphetamines.
According to testimony Friday, MondrianPowell lost 72 pounds and was physically and sexually assaulted while in the Santa Fe County jail awaiting trial.
Police discovered Segura’s body while performing a welfare check at the home she shared with Mondrian-Powell after receiving a call from law enforcement officials who had found her 2010 Kia passenger car abandoned with the keys in the ignition in Las Cruces.
State police arrested Mondrian-Powell in Las Cruces about three weeks later.
According to an affidavit for his arrest, Mondrian-Powell told police he and Segura had fought and he’d lost control and smashed her head against the brick floor several times.
He said she was bleeding, so he told her to go the bathroom and clean herself up. But she continued to verbally abuse him, he said, so he went to his room, got a gun, went to the bathroom where she was washing up, pointed the gun at her and pulled the trigger.
Mondrian-Powell said he did not know where the bullet hit Segura, according to the affidavit, but that he noticed she was bleeding from her neck. No bullets were found at the scene.
Mondrian-Powell told officers the altercation happened in early September 2016, the affidavit says, and they determined after talking to neighbors that Powell likely had held a yard sale at the home — which she owned but they both lived in — about 10 days later, as Segura lay dead inside.
Mondrian-Powell originally was charged with first-degree murder, but the charges were reduced to second-degree murder when the case was bound over to District Court in December 2016.
His bond was set at $500,000, before a change in the law that eliminated most money bonds. Delays in the case began almost immediately. According to court records, as a defendant in custody, Mondrian-Powell was entitled to have a preliminary hearing in the case within 10 days.
But prosecutors filed motions to continue the hearing twice, saying there was a lot of evidence to review. Forty days after his arrest, Mondrian-Powell still had not had that hearing, which is when Burrill, his public defender, first began filing motions asserting his due process rights were being violated.
As the case continued, an acrimonious relationship developed between prosecutors and defense attorneys.
Burrill had motioned the court to dismiss the charges against Mondrian-Powell twice before Friday’s hearing. In January, she filed a motion asking for dismissal on the grounds that the state had violated discovery rules. In April, she filed a motion to dismiss based on speedy trial and due process grounds.
There is no exact amount of time that triggers a dismissal of a case on grounds of failing to hold a speedy trial, Burrill said Friday, but if a complex case — as the judge deemed this one — is pending for more than 18 months, it triggers a judicial review of factors, including the reasons for the delay, the length of the delay and the prejudicial effect on the defendant.
Burrill argued Friday that state prosecutors who worked the case engaged in “gamesmanship” and made intentional misrepresentations as the case moved through the judicial process.
Ellington said when handing down his ruling he had not found that the state intentionally delayed the case but that two assistant district attorneys — Natalie Perry and Kevin Nault, who worked on the case in its early phases but are no longer with the District Attorney’s Office — had not done their due diligence.
“Whether it’s because of court schedules … turnover in the DA’s Office or lack of attention to the case by the prosecution,” Ellington said, “none of that is Mr. Mondrian-Powell’s fault.”
District Attorney Marco Serna declined to comment Friday following the judge’s decision.