Reflections this Week

This column mentions stuff I’m thinking about today.

First, we had a shooting so early Sunday morning that it delayed my wife and the dog from reaching their Sunday strolling grounds. I am appalled by anyone who says, “A police officer shot some one, but he’s a police officer, so he must be right.” I’m almost equally appalled by anyone who says, “A cop shot a civilian, so the cop must be wrong.” Especially when we're approaching the two-year anniversary of the unprovoked killing of Officer Jonah Hernandez. Answering a call, he entered a yard, courteously and quietly greeted the guy he saw there, and the civilian knifed him to death.

I think cops are wrong more often than most folks realize. I know many are dedicated public servants doing a job most of you wouldn’t care to try. Let’s try to let facts help form our opinions. (But ICE’s conduct in Minneapolis is different, not only because we have so much video but because ICE won’t allow a proper investigation to uncover more facts. It’s a core judicial principle that in a trial, if one party is responsible for our lacking full information, the judge can instruct the jury to assume that whatever that issue is, the facts hurt the party hiding the information.)

In football, it’s fine for 49er or Packer fans to decide all Dallas Cowboy players are bad folks. But making such judgments about all public officials, all members of this or that political party, all cops, or all motorcyclists ain’t fair. Also, it’s stupid. Humans are wonderfully varied, as are facts. This morning I watched a cop’s chest video from Kentucky. They’re searching for a lost child. Helicopters and all. Can’t find him. A dog shows up and starts barking at the officer, like he has something to contribute but happens to be a dog. The cop follows him into a back yard. The dog approaches a car and barks furiously at it. Trapped inside, the kid hugs the cop like there’s no tomorrow once they jimmy the lock. That cop has patrolled that neighborhood for years. Never saw that dog before. Or since.

I also wish we’d make 2February a national holiday. Not to celebrate the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed that day in 1848, but to remind us that the border our federales treat peoples so badly for crossing jumped over all of us. Mexico’s border used to be as far north as southern Wyoming. President Polk coveted San Francisco. When Mexicans declined to sell it for $30 million, we took it. (Gee, ya wonder why Greenland and Canada are nervous?) Point isn’t “Don’t protect the border!” It’s “Yo, this border jumped right into a community, so maybe use a little human decency and discretion.” At least, realize!

Lastly, will our governor, whom I loved when she first visited our radio show, be as infamous as Susana? She’s given us Jupiter. Now, when a regulated monopoly guarantees utilities a profit way better than stocks, and our permanent fund could buy PNM for a fraction of its funds, her appointees may let one of the worst private-equity firms buy it instead – so decisions get made with no concern for us, and profits go to distant investors.

That makes no sense. Not for us New Mexicans. Plenty for Blackstone. And maybe for the governor?

And we’re still Germans in 1933.

                                                 --  30  -- 

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 15 February 2026, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspoaper’s website ( sub nm These Things Are on my Mind; they Should Be on Yours ) and on KWG’s website (under Local Viewpoints). A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). ]

 

County Appears to Vioilate Due Process

Except in the Trump Administration and Doña Ana County, a key principle of our country is due process: the government can’t take away a right without fair notice, a fair hearing before someone neutral, and a route to appeal.

If they think you stole something, you get a court trial with a lawyer, and can appeal. Taking someone’s welfare benefits or medical license also requires “due process.” That distinguishes us from the Nazis, Saddam, or Attila.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is important. It’s first. You have a right to free speech, although it can be limited in schools or jails. Public input at the city council or county commission is a “limited public forum” at which you have a right to speak. That’s a Constitutional right the Supreme Court has long recognized.

You also have a First Amendment right to videotape officials at work, including police officers, although ICE might kill you for exercising that right in Minneapolis. Surprisingly, our county might jail you for it.

A local gadfly videotaped county officials more than they wanted to be videotaped. County Manager Scott Andrews and Interim County Attorney Cari Neill got angry and sent him a “trespass” letter purporting to ban him from county meetings for vaguely-alleged intrusive videotaping. No specifics; no hearing; no appeal.

That’s unusual. The courts have held that banning someone from county public-input requires due process: clearer charges, a fair hearing, and an appeal procedure. When folks pointed that out, Andrews/Neill said they were the bosses and knew what they were doing. I doubted that.

When the trespassed citizen attended a meeting, wearing a comical false mustache and waiting quietly in line to speak, they called police. LCPD declined, perhaps wisely. When they called Sheriff Kim Stewart, she probably had no choice. (She’s said on radio she had to act, whether she agrees with county officials or not.) The citizen was then arrested and jailed – and kept in jail for a day.

Preparing this column, I repeatedly asked the county officials about their conduct. I’d litigated this stuff as a lawyer since before they were born. And any fool can ask Chat GPT “What due process is required constitutionally for a county to ban a citizen from public meetings?” I’d also talked to relevant organizations. But I figured maybe I’d missed something. I sent them a long letter asking appropriate questions. Pathetically, they said they couldn’t say anything at all because there might be a lawsuit. I’ve rarely seen a public entity that unable to address such an issue. Most good lawyers, when you ask them to explain their positions and the legal support, do so readily – to convince you or learn their weaknesses. These folks’ silence isn’t a great sign that they have a clue.

This is scary, not just because it illegally abridges rights, but because it’s downright stupid and could be costly. Whatever your views on Project Jupiter, how these folks handled it broke or narrowly skirted law. One commissioner was appalled by an agenda packet full of blank or unfinished pages, and having just two days to read pretty extensive material.

This ain’t like banning your drunken uncle from your backyard. A normal citizen shouldn’t have to pay attorneys to enforce rights. If you have just cause, prove it. Further enforcing this novel idea they can ban annoying people from public input without due process, could cost the county dearly.

                                          – 30 –

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 8 February 2026, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website on the newspaper’s website and on KRWG’s website (under Local Viewpoints). A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). ]

[I guess we’ll see what happens in the courts. As with ICE, if misconduct is allowed to go unchallenged, it will continue. Is this misconduct? I sure think so. Even if I’m wrong in my understanding of the law, and a county can toss someone out without cue process, it’s unjust and unwise. Means if the county doesn’t like how I say what I say about officials, they can send me a letter telling me not to come back. My choices are to disobey them, get cited by law enforcement, and pay lawyers to defend my criminal case, or to pay lawyers to file a declaratory relief action asking the court to declare the county’s action legal. Neither is something we should want. Neither is something county officials should want: unjust conduct and a possibility of paying a bunch of unnecessary money. ]

[And it’s all unnecessary. If these “officials” had reasonable grounds, which is certainly possible, all they had to do was arrange for someone unbiased to be the hearing officer and invite the alleged trespasser to seek a hearing on the legality of the trespass order. Simple. Just seems plain stupid – or worse – not to do so. Were these officials bending the law to satisfy Project Jupiter proponents? I know the trespassed person was a critic of the county’s approval of Jupiter; and I’m guessing maybe he videotaped Project Jupiter proponents in the parking lot, though that’s merely a guess.]

[ So far, a majority of the Commission steadfastly declines to consider that staff could be wrong here.]

  

A Polite Request to Right a Gross Injustice

This is by way of an open letter to Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

Dear Governor Abbott:

I urge you to do something just, simply because it is just.

Let me mention first several points that either we’d likely agree on or the Supreme Court has articulated as Constitutionally required:

> an all-white jury hearing non-white defendant’s criminal trial is constitutionally suspect;

> for a 44-year-old man, a 50-year sentence is essentially a life sentence.

> framing someone for a murder is bad conduct, and freeing that framed prisoner from Death Row is good conduct;

So please consider these facts: a sheriff arrives at a man’s home, intending to arrest him, but without an appropriate warrant; when the man questions whether an arrest would be legal, the sheriff draws a gun on the man, who then disarms the sheriff without harming him; the man flees, but is caught and imprisoned, and sentenced to fifty years’ imprisonment.

Would you, personally, call that just?

Legally, the conviction is valid because it survived direct appeal under Texas law. So let’s assume, although the sheriff told a TV interviewer that day that he was unharmed when the man disarmed him, that the sheriff sustained some minor injury.

In a situation where a man is rightly or wrongly defending his own home, believing himself in the right legally, and takes away the invader’s gun, without harming the man or shooting anyone, should he serve fifty years in prison?

Your only possible answer, privately, could be, “Of course not!”

If in 1996 there was some need to emphasize local law enforcement’s authority or dissuade social activism, we are nearly three full decades beyond that moment.

A 50-year sentence for resisting arrest is not normal.

You could pardon this man or commute his sentence.

Why should you perhaps not?

To protect the sheriff who may have committed perjury by claiming grave injuries at trial? Sheriff McDaniel reportedly is no longer with us, and can’t be prosecuted.

Because this has gotten entangled in the culture wars, and all of us need to stay loyal to our side, whether it makes sense or not? A man’ s life is at stake. A man who’s 71 years old and whose writings apparently have inspired many.

Because mercy would somehow undermine respect for law enforcement? If anything, showing that Texas can be fair, even to a prisoner, even to a proud Chicano, might enhance respect for law enforcement. Commuting such an extraordinarily long sentence, given his good behavior, does not say that there was error by the original prosecutor or court.

Why should you? Because you can, by commutation or pardon, and because it is the right thing to do. If you are in doubt, try this exercise: sit in your backyard and consider whether God, or Buddha, Socrates or Oliver Wendell Holmes, or whomever you most admire, would keep the man in jail; explain the facts fairly to your six-year-old daughter or niece, and ask her; discuss it with your minister, if you have one, or the first lady of Texas, who earned a masters in theology, has run Catholic schools, and likely had learned a little about forgiveness; or go and talk with the man, then decide.

In an unjust world, make one thing more just.

It’s just right, is all. Please free Xinachitli, Alvaro Luna Hernández. Or explain honestly to Jesus or yourself why you do not.

                                                     – 30 --

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 1 February 2026, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and will presently appear on the newspaper’s website and on KRWG’s website (under Local Viewpoints). A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). ]