State District Court Judge Sheri Raphaelson said she did not punish “vindictively” May 27 before sentencing a Tierra Amarilla man to the maximum sentence possible for causing a car crash that severely injured four people.
Although a controversial blood test showed he was sober, her ruling showed she thought Joseph Luna, 29, had been drinking prior to the Sept. 6, 2008, crash and she was quick to distance herself from the state’s decision to drop most of the felony charges in the case.
Luna was sentenced to 18 months in prison for one felony charge of cocaine possession and an additional 90 days for a misdemeanor charge of careless driving at the sentencing hearing at the Tierra Amarilla Courthouse. The sentences, which are to be served consecutively, are connected to the head-on collision in which Luna drove his Toyota Camry into the oncoming lane of traffic on Highway 84 and crashed into a Ford Ranger driven by Lance Leyba, 32, Chama.
Rio Arriba County Jail Administrator Larry DeYapp said Luna was being held there temporarily and will eventually be transferred to the Central New Mexico Correctional Facility in Los Lunas.
Luna was initially charged with injuring his passenger Erica Quintana, 24, Chama, who suffered a broken ankle, and Leyba in the other vehicle, who was treated for a broken knee; his brother Nicholas Leyba, 30, Chama, who suffered a broken leg, hip and pelvis; and Lauren Lucero, 27, Albuquerque, who injured her foot and suffered a frontal-lobe hemorrhage.
These injuries were charged as four felony counts of great bodily injury by vehicle and each carried a potential three-year sentence. But Luna escaped those charges when Assistant District Attorney Cynthia Hill claimed a Rio Arriba Sheriff’s investigation failed to provide enough evidence that Luna was intoxicated. Deputy Jose Martinez has said he did everything he needed in the case, which was strong enough for a grand jury to return an indictment on Luna.
Raphaelson, at the beginning of pronouncing the sentence without opining on it, immediately distanced herself from the District Attorney’s Office’s decision to drop the four injury charges.
“It had nothing to do with me,” she said. “That was the state’s decision.”
And, even though a blood test taken five-and-a-half hours after the crash did not give the prosecution evidence Luna was drunk or high, Raphaelson said its result of a 0.04 blood alcohol concentration was evidence Luna had been drinking that night. She fired back at defense attorney Paul Branch when he said that was an inference and inadmissible in court.
“I do not choose to address that interruption, which I’ll excuse,” the judge said.
The state, which needed to prove either intoxication or reckless driving to get a conviction in a trial on the great bodily injury charges, amended one of the felony charges to careless driving in the guilty plea agreement Luna signed May 13. On the same day, Hill dropped the other three charges in a separate document.
Luna, who walked with a cane at the hearing, apologized twice to the family prior to the judgment.
“I’m very sorry this happened,” he said. “I completed a DWI program in jail.”
Raphaelson said his statement made no mention of the cocaine that deputy Martinez found on him, nor of the drug test a June 11, 2009, court document states he failed when he tested positive for cocaine. The tests were part of Luna’s conditional release from jail during the trial. Following that, he spent three months in County Jail until his family put up 10 percent of a $25,000 cash bond, according to his mother, Diane Luna.
Branch asked the judge to consider sentencing Luna to one year of supervised probation because he had no prior offenses. He said the accident, which was the result of an argument between he and his ex-girlfriend Quintana, destroyed his family’s only vehicle and injured Luna’s left leg, for which he was recently in surgery. Branch said his client was the primary caregiver for his and Quintana’s 5-year-old son.
Diane Luna left in tears following the ruling.
The two charges Joseph Luna pleaded to made no mention of the four people he injured. Lance Leyba, Lucero and Joann Leyba, the mother of two of the victims, gave impact statements prior to sentencing. They all said they were still struggling after the crash.
“I did not realize how difficult it would be to reach for a glass of water,” Lucero said of her time in physical therapy. “… My family has to make adjustments for me.”
Lance Leyba said he feels his knee has been crippled following the accident. He also described the crash scene in which he saw his brother Nicholas Leyba try to stand with a broken leg, pelvis and hip and fall straight to the ground. He said his brother was suffocating on blood. He was flown by helicopter to St. Vincent Hospital in Santa Fe, where he coded in surgery because of a reaction to drugs he was given, his brother said.
“You’ll never know the feeling of sickness and emptiness that went through me when I saw the people I loved the most fighting for their lives,” he said.
Nicholas Leyba did not speak, but Joann Leyba said he is still recovering, and the crash caused him to lose his job as a van driver for a Santa Fe health clinic. She asked the judge to consider sentencing Joseph Luna to drug therapy and random drug monitoring if he was given probation in the case.