New Mexico
How will new laws come into play in mental competency challenges?
Since 2017, the governor’s office says 18,000 criminal charges in New Mexico have been dismissed because of competency issues.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – A woman was caught on camera smashing windows and damaging nearly a dozen Albuquerque city and police vehicles.
It isn’t the first time she’s reportedly done something like this. So why, after spending less than 24 hours in custody, is she already out of jail?
Danielle Magee’s case highlights a major issue we’ve seen in thousands of cases in New Mexico. They’ve been dismissed because the suspects are deemed not competent to stand trial.
KOB 4 has been digging into what lawmakers in Santa Fe did to try to address the issue and what more needs to be done.
It’s a longstanding issue, the so-called revolving door in New Mexico’s justice system. Suspects arrested, deemed incompetent to stand trial, and then released back on the streets only to repeat the cycle over and over.
It’s one of the issues lawmakers addressed this session, but the question is how will it be implemented?
“We are tired of seeing the same people coming back into the system and not being able to do anything for them,” said Deputy Bernalillo County District Attorney, Steven Diamond.
That is exactly what has happened to repeat offender, Danielle Magee. A security camera caught her smashing the windows of 21 city and police cars parked downtown.
This is the latest chapter in a long story. She has been charged several times since 2022 for similar crimes:
- 2024: Damaging a police vehicle
- 2023: Damaging eight city vehicles and 32 personal vehicles in Civic Plaza
In the majority of those cases, she’s been found incompetent to stand trial.
“As annoying as her crimes are, as they create public safety concerns, they don’t rise to that level of dangerousness. So the law would say her case gets dismissed,” said Diamond.
Since 2017, the governor’s office says 18,000 criminal charges in New Mexico have been dismissed because of competency issues.
This past legislative session, lawmakers passed a crime package that creates access to behavioral health care across the state for these offenders.
“We are now able to offer some help for some people who are found incompetent, when we otherwise wouldn’t be able to,” Diamond said.
The issue now:
“Those services currently don’t exist. So we aren’t sure how that void is going to be filled,” said Tess Williams with the Law Offices of the Public Defender.
While the Legislature has put in place the groundwork to fix the competency revolving door, prosecutors and public defenders agree the issue isn’t going away immediately.
“We have a serious need for long term and short term mental health treatment facilities,” Williams said.
“Passing legislation is not the end of the process. Now we have to figure out how that legislation is implemented,” said Diamond.
Magee was released from custody Tuesday and has a mental evaluation scheduled in April.
After years of failure to land a “big fish” business for New Mexico’s economy (or effectively use the oil and gas revenues to grow the economy) Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham with the help of her Economic Development Secretary Rob Black have lured no fewer than three large data centers to New Mexico. These data centers are being built to serve the booming world of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and they will have profound impacts on New Mexico.
It is our view that having these data centers locate in New Mexico is better than having them locate elsewhere. While we have many differences of opinion with this governor, we are pleased to see her get serious about growing and diversifying New Mexico’s oil-dependent economy albeit quite late in her second term.
Sadly, the governor and legislature have chosen not to use broad based economic reforms like deregulation or tax cuts to improve New Mexico’s competitiveness. But, with the failure of her “preferred” economic development “wins” like Maxeon and Ebon solar both of which the governor announced a few years ago, but haven’t panned out, the focus on a more realistic strategy is welcome and long overdue.
Currently, three new data centers are slated to be built in New Mexico:
- Oracle’s Project Jupiter in Santa Teresa with an investment of $165 billion.
- Project Zenith slated to be built in Roswell amounts to a $11.7 billion investment.
- New Era Energy & Digital, Inc. While the overall investment is unclear, the energy requirement is the largest of the three at 7 gigawatts (that’s seven times the power used by the City of San Francisco).
What is a data center? Basically, they are the real-world computing infrastructure that makes up the Internet. The rise of AI requires vast new computing power. It is critical that these facilities have uninterrupted electricity.
That electricity is going to be largely generated by traditional sources like natural gas and possibly nuclear. That contravenes New Mexico’s Energy Transition Act of 2019 which was adopted by this Gov. and many of the legislators still in office. Under the Act electrical power emissions are supposed to be eliminated in a few years.
With the amount of money being invested in these facilities and the simple fact that wind and solar and other “renewable” energy sources aren’t going to get the job done. In 2025 the Legislature passed and MLG signed HB 93 which allows for the creation of “microgrids” that won’t tax the grid and make our electricity more expensive, but the ETA will have to be amended or ignored to provide enough electricity for these data centers. There’s no other option.
New Mexicans have every right to wonder why powerful friends of the governor can set up their own natural gas microgrids while the rest of us face rising costs and decreased reliability from so-called “renewables.” Don’t get me wrong, having these data centers come to New Mexico is an economic boon.
But it comes tempered with massive subsidies including a 30-year property tax exemption and up to $165 billion in industrial revenue bonds. New Mexico is ideally suited as a destination for these data centers with its favorable climate and lack of natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods. We shouldn’t be giving away such massive subsidies.
Welcoming the data center boom to New Mexico better than rejecting them and pushing them to locate in other states. There is no way to avoid CO2 emissions whether they happen here or somewhere else. But, there are questions about both the electricity demand and subsidies that must be addressed as New Mexico’s data center boom begins.
What will the Legislature, radical environmental groups, and future governors of our state do to hinder (or help) bring these data centers to our State? That is an open question that depends heavily on upcoming statewide elections. It is important that New Mexicans understand and appreciate these complicated issues.
Paul Gessing is president of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation. The Rio Grande Foundation is an independent, nonpartisan, tax-exempt research and educational organization dedicated to promoting prosperity for New Mexico based on principles of limited government, economic freedom and individual responsibility
SANTA FE, N.M. (KFOX14/CBS4) – The New Mexico Department of Health says it will continue to recommend the full schedule of childhood vaccines.
State officials announced the move Tuesday, directly defying a new federal policy that scaled back routine immunization guidance.
The announcement comes after U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS), under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., reduced the number of vaccines it recommends for all children.
The New Mexico Department of Health stated the federal changes were “not based on new scientific evidence or safety data.”
“New Mexico will not follow the federal government in walking away from decades of proven public health practice,” said Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham. “Our recommendations remain unchanged.”
State health officials sought to reassure parents, emphasizing that vaccines remain widely available and covered by insurance.
“We know this is confusing for parents, but the science is clear: vaccines are safe, effective, and save children’s lives,” said Dr. Miranda Durham, chief medical officer for NMDOH.
All childhood vaccinations will continue to be covered under programs like Medicaid and the federal Vaccines for Children Program.
The state encourages parents to consult their healthcare providers using the American Academy of Pediatrics’ immunization schedule.
RECOMMENDED: CDC cuts childhood vaccine list, sparking healthcare professionals’ concerns
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