Lost paperwork at the Santa Fe County Magistrate Court is a chronic problem. The fumbling has let drunken drivers off the hook, led the court to issue baseless arrest warrants and kept some prisoners waiting in jail while allowing accused wife beaters to go unpunished, The New Mexican found in an investigation of court practices.

For an example of the bureaucratic nightmare that is the local Magistrate Court, look no further than the case of Tatiana Kireeva.

Her story from arrest to legal limbo began when the 28-year-old Santa Fe woman rolled her 1999 Jeep Cherokee on the N.M. 599 Frontage Road early March 15. Based on Kireeva's breath alcohol test, a Santa Fe sheriff's deputy arrested her on charges of driving while intoxicated and careless driving. The deputy filed a criminal complaint about Kireeva at the Magistrate Court the next day.

Kireeva hired Santa Fe defense attorney Marc Edwards, who filed a waiver of arraignment and entered a plea of not guilty on April 1, court records show.

Two weeks later, despite the waiver, the court dispatched a summons to Kireeva — who never got it — to appear at an arraignment scheduled for May 1, according to Edwards and court records. Predictably, Kireeva failed to show up at the arraignment. Based on the failure to appear, the court issued a bench warrant for her arrest three and a half months later.

Edwards learned of the bench warrant only recently after a reporter asked him about the case. He hand-delivered Kireeva's arraignment waiver and other documents in April to the court on Galisteo Street, Edwards said, and made sure a clerk put a time-stamp on the papers. Edwards said he did that specifically to cover himself in case the documents were lost. Neither the lawyer nor his client has heard from the court since.

"This is not an unusual event," Edwards said. "I go over to the court a lot to fix the same problem Tatiana is now dealing with. If my client would have been picked up (by police) on this, it would have been a travesty. I would say it subjects the county to civil liability."

Magistrate Richard "Buzzy" Padilla later canceled Kireeva's warrant and said he probably will have to dismiss her case because six months — the legally prescribed time to prosecute — have passed.

"I was furious about that one," Padilla said. "For whatever reason, (the waiver of arraignment) did not get into the file. It was time-stamped but never put in the file. That's part of the problems here."

As the Kireeva case shows, the Magistrate Court is drowning in paperwork and has been for years.

When the court doesn't perform its duty, a wide swath of the community can feel the effects. Magistrate Court handles traffic tickets, small civil claims and criminal misdemeanors, including drunken driving and domestic violence. It is also the court of first appearance for every person in Santa Fe County charged with a felony. The elected magistrate judges make $70,081 a year.

Bureaucratic troubles at Magistrate Court go back at least 15 years but have grown worse — acutely so, according to some — in recent years. Clerks routinely cannot find files, and when they can, the files are often incomplete. Attorneys don't get hearing notices. Phone calls from the public go unanswered.

Poor record keeping isn't just a problem for the clerks, judges and lawyers who work at the court. Because the court deals with the most common legal matters, the public can find troubles at the court a scary reality:

• The law-abiding public loses when cases involving drunken driving or domestic violence fall through the cracks and get dismissed because of procedural errors.

• Defendants face extended jail time when arraignments get delayed or face the threat of arrest when warrants are issued in error.

• Scofflaws potentially skate by without paying fines.

• Lawyers and clients are on pins and needles for months not knowing whether a case file is complete or whether the case will go forward.

The situation also causes anxious moments for court administrators at the state level. The Administrative Office of the Courts, which oversees all magistrate courts in the state, has posted personnel at the Santa Fe court for at least 18 months trying to clean up the mess. But progress at the state's second-largest Magistrate Court has been slow, said Arthur Pepin, director of the state office, and stronger measures were needed.

Those measures came from the New Mexico Supreme Court. Chief Justice Edward Chavez issued an order Aug. 20 demanding court improvements and empowering Pepin, who asked for the order, to make changes. Chavez put teeth in his order by requiring that he receive reports of unresolved issues or any employee's failure to cooperate.

Pepin said the order clearly is "an unusual step," but he asked for it because he wanted to make sure those who work at the court know he means business.

"I wanted it to be very clear to all the employees of the court that we were going to change things," Pepin said. "It's not just a good idea, but now it's pursuant to an order of the Supreme Court. I knew I'd be sending people there and I wanted them to have that authority."

What went wrong?

Problems at the court are not new. Bill Dimas, presiding judge at the court for about 10 years before he retired in 2006, said that during his tenure, the court frequently fell behind with traffic citations and authorized clerks to work overtime to catch up. But, he said in a recent interview, the court's files then were in relatively good shape. He said he was "really stringent" about paying attention to statutory deadlines and didn't have to dismiss many cases because the time to prosecute them had run out.

One longtime defense attorney — who, like other lawyers and current and former court employees who continue to deal with the court, asked for anonymity to guard against retaliation — said the situation at the court began to go downhill after Dimas retired and deteriorated further when chief clerk Rose Roybal retired in December 2007.

"Between Dimas and Rose, things were operating real efficiently over there," the lawyer said.

After Dimas and Roybal left, a third key employee, a longtime clerk, was out for months on medical leave, sending the court deeper into a tailspin because no one really knew how to do her job, according to sources, including Padilla.

Dimas' successor as presiding judge, George Anaya Jr., used his new position to implement policy changes that, according to several court observers, further disrupted the routine of the office.

When Roybal retired, the Administrative Office of the Courts determined that the court needed to reform the procedures it used to process cases and paperwork, Pepin said. The state office hired a new chief clerk, Michelle Portillo, who had been a supervisor for eight years at the state District Court Clerk's Office in Santa Fe.

Portillo acknowledged that reform has been a big challenge but claimed the court is making progress.

While there are thousands of cases left to close, the court has caught up on all traffic citations, improved scheduling and jury selection procedures, isn't losing files anymore and hasn't lost a case on the six-month rule recently, Portillo said.

Court critics, however, still see significant shortcomings — a point that comes through in interviews with lawyers and current court employees and in analyses of court records.

One defense lawyer complained that phone calls to the court often go unanswered. Therefore, it takes a personal visit to the court to answer even the most routine question, such as when a hearing is scheduled.

"I win (cases) all the time over there because stuff gets lost," the attorney said. "It's a double-edged sword. On one hand you want a good clean fight. But because of this ineptitude, people walk all the time."

Court continues to drop cases

The case of Tatiana Kireeva, the DWI defendant mistakenly named in an arrest warrant, is an example of what lawyers see as an all-too-common slip-up. One defense lawyer said one in 10 of his Magistrate Court cases ends up dismissed because of blown procedures.

He said he files waivers of arraignment, then sits back and waits for the court to screw up.

"By that time, we're three or four months down the line," the lawyer said. "So now they have 90 days to set the case for trial instead of 180. Unless the DA's Office catches it, it falls through the cracks and gets dismissed on the six-month rule."

The numbers back up his claim.

So far this year, the court has dismissed 54 cases on the six-month-rule, according to statistics furnished by Bernice Ramos, leader of the team assigned to help improve the court. However, those appear to be older cases dating as far back as 1998. Ramos said she wasn't sure why cases from this year weren't included and didn't know how accurate the statistics were.

To document the current situation, The New Mexican requested a list of every DWI charge issued by the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office in March and April. The time frame was chosen because the six-month rule had run out or was about to run out on those cases.

Of the 67 DWIs issued by deputies during those two months, The New Mexican found no court record for nine of them when the list was cross-referenced with online court records.

Three of those nine names appeared in online jail records as having been booked into jail on suspicion of DWI. Another of the nine names appeared in published police notes in The New Mexican, an archive check showed. No record was found for the remaining five names, which could mean nothing more than a spelling error somewhere along the line. But it also could mean the cases fell through the cracks.

Online court records also indicated that a handful of the DWIs had been dismissed by a prosecutor during that time. However, two of the cases bore the distinct hallmarks of cases dropped due to blown procedures.

One was Kireeva's. The other centered on Patrick Martinez, 28, who was arrested by sheriff's deputies on April 19 and charged with DWI. On May 15, attorney Tom Clark filed a waiver of arraignment and a not-guilty plea. Nonetheless, the court scheduled a May 26 arraignment for Martinez, but he did not attend. The court then issued a bench warrant in error, discovered the mistake and canceled the warrant, according to the records.

Martinez is now set for a jury trial Feb. 15, 2010 — three months after the six-month rule is set to expire, records show. No extensions have been filed in the case. Clark declined to comment about the case.

Meanwhile, in response to a records request last week, a court clerk could not find Martinez's file.

Analysis of court and law enforcement records found two other cases that have been dismissed as recently as this month for violation of the six-month rule.

Next step? More time

Despite that spotty paper trail, Portillo, Pepin and others involved in the state-mandated court reform expressed confidence that the efforts have improved matters and will continue to bear fruit in the near future.

Padilla, Anaya and the other judges at the court — David Segura and Sandra Miera — all said they support Portillo and the state's efforts to improve the court. Anaya, however, said he didn't think the efforts will work without the addition of more clerks.

"I hope they'll come up with procedures to do it, but how are you going to do that with the staff so bogged down?" he said.

Two current employees and a former employee expressed little confidence that the situation will improve in the near future. They laid the blame for lack of progress squarely at the feet of Portillo and her supervisors, and said things won't get better until a new management team is hired.

A current employee characterized the management team as "a little clique" who "all cover for each other."

The former employee seconded those sentiments. "They've gotten a lot of help and they're still in the same boat," the former employee said. "It's a terrible management team."

Portillo said she believes she has made satisfactory progress estimated that only 40 percent of the work has been done so far to make the court function efficiently.

"It's still a big job," Portillo said. "We've come a long way since I've been here."

Ramos, the leader of the court improvement team, also said the situation has improved, yet she said she thinks the job won't be done by the time the Supreme Court's order expires March 1.

"I will probably have a report and a recommendation to extend the order," she said. "It will take more time for us to be successful."

Contact Jason Auslander at 986-3076 or :jauslander@sfnewmexican.com.


Correction: A previous version of this article misidentified Chief Justice Edward Chavez. The error was corrected 11:45 a.m. Nov. 30, 2009.