The Rio Arriba County Sheriff's Office says the seizure of its computers by New Mexico State Police officers won't lead to the discovery of any new evidence related to a controversial drunken driving case, and it wants the computers back.
Stephen Aarons, lawyer for Rio Arriba County Sheriff Tommy Rodella, filed a petition at the New Mexico Supreme Court on Friday afternoon, asking justices to quash the State Police search warrant that led to their computers being taken Thursday and to order those computers returned.
Sheriff 's office spokesman Jake Arnold said deputies can't locate particular files without the hardware and can't generate the documents they need when making arrests or asking a judge for a warrant.
"We cannot function without the computers," he said.
New Mexico State Police aren't saying how long it will take to "clone" the computers and have them returned. District Attorney Angela "Spence" Pacheco said she believes they can be returned within a week.
"We understand any type of electronic devices in law enforcement these days are critical, and I would assume this would be a priority case," said State Police spokesman Lt. Tim Johnson.
Pacheco won't say what investigators are hoping to find in the sheriff's office computers.
But the State Police search warrant, made public when filed in District Court on Friday, says prosecutors want to know who wrote disputed reports in the ongoing Juan de Dios Cordova vehicular homicide case.
They are also looking for any new information as to why the truck that killed motorcyclist Mark Wolfe on the High Road to Taos over Memorial Day weekend was destroyed as scrap instead of being held as evidence for Cordova's prosecution, Johnson said.
State District Judge T. Glenn Ellington - who is overseeing the Cordova vehicular homicide case - signed off on the search warrant for the computers this week. Last month, he asked the State Police to investigate how the truck that is key to the case was allowed to be destroyed.
On May 28, an orange truck allegedly driven by Cordova - who's accused of being drunk behind the wheel - hit a motorcycle carrying Wolfe and his wife, Debbie Hill, on N.M. 76, along the High Road to Taos. Wolfe was killed, and Hill was badly injured.
A preliminary hearing to determine whether Cordova should stand trial has extended over five days of testimony during the past few weeks, with another hearing day scheduled for next week. Lawyers on both sides have been trying to unravel various controversial aspects of the Rio Arriba County Sheriff's Office investigation into the wreck.
Deputy Paula Archuleta was one of the primary investigators, but according to the State Police search warrant affidavit explaining why the computers should be seized, her report from the day of the wreck was rewritten repeatedly by others at the sheriff's office, until it was so different she disputed whether she should sign it.
Aarons said all the changes were merely grammatical.
"The first version was one page that had no periods, commas or paragraphs," he said. "It was not readable."
The warrant affidavit, however, says some facts had been changed. The finished report, it says, indicated that she had seen alcoholic beverage containers in the truck and had taken motorcycle parts into evidence when neither was true, according to the State Police affidavit.
Arnold, the sheriff's office spokesman, denied any facts were changed as the report was rewritten.
The State Police affidavit also says Rodella himself took the report from Archuleta and returned it with corrections.
But Arnold said Friday, "Absolutely, Paula never gave the sheriff a report."
Investigators also hope to find clues in the computers that help them understand why Cordova's truck was sold as scrap and then destroyed.
The owner of an Española towing company testified at the Cordova case preliminary that Archuleta verbally gave permission for the truck to be released so it could be scrapped, but the sheriff's office denies that.
The sheriff's office had already hired a contractor in Española to clone its computers, as per an earlier order by Judge Ellington, but State Police took the job over Thursday, as the fifth day in Cordova's hearing unfolded at District Court.
Pacheco said Thursday that the switch was made "to make everyone more comfortable" and "maintain the integrity of the investigation."
Rodella's off ice is not alleged to have committed any crime.
Copyright 2011 Albuquerque Journal
