Weeks after taking a global plea deal for charges related to helping his 15-year-old girlfriend dodge police and felon in possession of a firearm, a 48-year-old Chimayó man is back in jail after picking up new charges for drunk driving.
Prosecutors dismissed the drunk driving case shortly after it was filed but Clarence Diaz remains in jail pending a probation violation hearing on charges that he picked up the new charges and that he was drinking, both of which go against the conditions of his supervised release.
Diaz pleaded guilty in two separate district court cases on Aug. 19.
In one, he pleaded guilty to contributing to the delinquency of a minor and resisting arrest in a case where he drove his 15-year-old girlfriend away from her juvenile probation hearing, then stalled police who believed she was in his house, a move that “facilitated her escape,” New Mexico State Police Officer Nathaniel Garcia wrote in a criminal complaint for Diaz’s arrest.
While a State Police officer heard him talking to his underage girlfriend in his house, Diaz claimed he was talking to his dog and that his TV was on and didn’t know where the girl was, before admitting she was probably in the house. After the girl’s mother arrived, officers found her hiding behind a TV in a back room and arrested her on a warrant issued after she fled from a probation hearing.
In another case, he pleaded guilty to felon in possession of a firearm and negligent use of a deadly weapon for walking out of his house, waving a gun around and then firing it, all caught on surveillance video by his aunt, as he was outside her house, next door when he fired the gun.
In the plea deal, Diaz admitted he was convicted of attempted drug trafficking in 2014, making him eligible for habitual offender enhancements, but it could not be used against him unless “defendant violates conditions listed below,” including not to get arrested again, to not drink and to not use or possess drugs.
The plea deal, signed by prosecutor Kathryn McEnery and accepted by District Judge Anastasia Martin, suspended a six-and-a-half year sentence and put him on supervised probation for five years.
Just a few weeks after the Aug. 19 plea, prosecutor Kimberly Weston filed to have his probation revoked on Sept. 5, citing a misdemeanor drunk driving charge and that drinking was involved in his charge, both violations of the conditions of his probation.
Española City Police Officer Andrew O’Hara charged Diaz with aggravated DWI and open container of alcohol in a vehicle on Aug. 31, after being sent to the Santa Claran Hotel Casino. Santa Clara tribal police officers stopped Diaz for being unable to maintain a lane. Inside the car, officers found an empty bottle of Jim Beam whiskey in a “cubicle next to the steering wheel.”
Prosecutor Shelby Bradley dismissed the drunk driving case on Sept. 2 in a form motion, citing “further investigation,” three days before his colleague filed the motion to revoke Diaz’s probation, citing the charge Bradley dismissed.
An evidentiary hearing on his probation violation is set for Nov. 4. He is being held without bail in the Tierra Amarilla jail.