While a jury convicted Carlos Fierro of vehicular homicide Friday in the November death of William Tenorio, his journey through the criminal justice system appears far from over.

First he must be sentenced for the conviction — he faces up to six years in prison on the homicide charge — and prosecutors must decide whether to retry him on the separate charge of causing a fatal accident, which includes fleeing the scene. However, the sentencing, set for Nov. 13, might have to wait.

Fierro's attorney, Jason Bowles, told state District Judge Michael Vigil that he plans to file a motion for a new trial within 10 days. He said later he will base that motion on the fact that a jury instruction was altered in the middle of deliberations, as well as the fact that prosecutors used a secure, law-enforcement only database to vet jurors and didn't share that information with the defense.

Bowles said if the new trial is granted, he will also renew a previous motion, which vigil denied, asking to move the trial out of Santa Fe County.

"The playing field was never level from the first moment (of the trial)," Bowles said. "It just wasn't a fair trial because of the state's actions."

District Attorney Angela "Spence" Pacheco said Friday she hadn't yet decided whether to retry Fierro on the causing a fatal accident charge. Beyond that, she said she was proud of the effort by her office.

"Quite frankly, the community needed this conviction," she said. "People have been heavily affected by this case. Did we do anything that was unethical or inappropriate? I don't think so."

Emotional verdict

The jury of six men and six women sat through six days of trial, then deliberated about 30 hours over five days before sending a note to Vigil about 2 p.m. saying they had reached a conviction on one count and an impasse on the other. Vigil asked them to go back in and figure out whether they could give it one more effort to break the impasse. A note came back from jurors minutes later.

"The answer is a big no," Vigil said after reading the note.

Before he brought out the jury again, the judge warned spectators in the crowded courtroom against outbursts of emotion. "I want you to keep yourselves under control," he said.

After Vigil read the verdict, jury foreman Paul Serrano told him that 11 jurors voted guilty on the charge of causing a fatal accident — which also included fleeing the scene of an accident — while one voted not guilty.

Fierro's mother, Joyce, sobbed loudly after the verdict was read. Other Fierro family and friends also began crying. Members of the Tenorio family, on the other side of the courtroom, could be seen dabbing their eyes.

Based on the judge's orders, deputies held spectators in the courtroom for about 10 minutes after jurors left to give them time to leave the premises. Deputies allowed the Fierro family to leave first, then the Tenorio family, who went out the courthouse's back door because Fierro's friends and family were still in the front of the building.

Adrianne Tenorio, William Tenorio's younger daughter, said afterward that the verdict was bittersweet for her and her family.

"I hurt for both families," the 21-year-old said. "I felt bad for (Fierro's) family. That made me cry. We both went through a lot. I'm always going to be missing my dad. (But) I mean, I can't be happy for this. We're not the kind of family to be happy about others' sadness."

James Tenorio, William Tenorio's 16-year-old son, said he was relieved the ordeal of the trial was over, though his sister reminded him the entire saga appears likely to continue.

Joe Little, husband of William Tenorio's sister, said the family was satisfied with the verdict and praised the effort by the District Attorney's Office to bring the case to trial before the anniversary of William Tenorio's death. "We felt that's what the verdict should have been all along," he said. Little also said the family is prepared for whatever twists and turns that might occur in the upcoming months.

Fierro declines comment

Louis Cordova, Fierro's uncle, said he didn't believe his nephew was treated fairly by the justice system.

"He was convicted before he even got here by the media, the courts," he said. "He didn't get a fair trial."

Tom Cordova, another Fierro uncle, echoed his brother.

"Obviously we didn't receive a fair trial," he said. "It was prejudiced to Carlos from day one."

Fierro was led out of the courthouse by two Santa Fe County sheriff's deputies about 4 p.m. He waved to a reporter but declined to comment.

Fierro's blood-alcohol content was 0.21 about two hours after the crash, which occurred just before 2 a.m. on Nov. 26 when William Tenorio was walking across Guadalupe Street. The legal limit for drivers is 0.08. Fierro fled the scene and was pulled over minutes later in front of the Santa Fe Community Convention Center. William Tenorio, a San Felipe Pueblo resident and local DJ, died later the same day of injuries suffered in the crash.

Case weaknesses

Christine Bynum, a 55-year-old geochemist who served on Fierro's jury, said she was impressed by the commitment of her fellow jurors — especially the foreman — to come to a verdict.

"We really wanted to get to a place where we felt comfortable with our decision," she said.

Bynum said she thought prosecutors "did not put on a strong case" or lay out the facts very well. "There was some uncertainty as to what transpired as to the accident itself," she said.

That forced jurors to spend about the first half-day of deliberations going over the hundreds of photo exhibits, as well as the numerous and sometimes conflicting eyewitness accounts of what occurred early that morning, Bynum said. After that, she said she had a "very clear picture of what happened."

Another problem with the state's case was their lack of expert witnesses, Bynum said.

"The defense's expert cast doubt on the state's (accident) reconstruction and the state never said anything about it," she said. "Experts would have helped the state side."

Prosecutors have said they didn't call the Police Department's accident reconstructionist as a matter of trial strategy.

Bynum said she thought the defense "did a pretty good job of presenting information from their point of view," including illuminating issues regarding the lighting at the crash scene.

Deliberations on the vehicular homicide count came down to one juror who felt that the responsibility for the crash lay equally with Fierro and William Tenorio, Bynum said. That was when jurors sent out a note saying that a jury instruction related to the homicide count contained confusing and contradictory language, she said.

After that, Vigil and prosecutors realized that the instruction had been altered by the defense — without any objection by the prosecution — to the point where it erred in stating the law. Vigil then read the jurors the correct legal instruction.

Bynum said jurors came to an agreement on that count about 10 minutes after Vigil corrected the instruction.

Deliberations on the second count against Fierro were more difficult because prosecutors didn't present "clear, overwhelming evidence he knew what had happened," she said. That forced jurors to pick through both Fierro's statement to police and his testimony on the stand in their quest to determine whether he knew what he hit, Bynum said.

Under the law, Fierro could not have been convicted of the charge if he didn't know he'd hit a human being.

Based on those two things, 11 jurors became convinced he knew what he hit, while the 12th wanted concrete proof of it, which didn't exist in the evidence, she said.

"A majority came to the conclusion that with a person this large, you would have known you hit somebody," Bynum said. "I just couldn't go the other way."

In opening arguments, prosecutor Juan Valencia described William Tenorio as "a big, gentle bear of a man" who weighed 200 pounds.

Spectators at the trial frequently could hear raised voices coming from the jury room. However, Bynum said that while the proceedings became impassioned at times, they were always respectful.

"We weren't at each other's throats or anything," she said. "There were a couple of loud people and it got loud at times."

Overall, the jury was serious about its job and did the best job it could, Bynum said.

"We didn't walk through the door thinking Mr. Fierro was guilty," she said. "Most were undecided or their first thought was that he was not guilty."

Fierro's passenger at the time of the crash, former state police Sgt. Alfred Lovato, also has been charged with vehicular homicide and causing a fatal accident. Vigil will decide Wednesday during a preliminary hearing whether evidence exists to bind over Lovato for trial.

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