A former state police sergeant pleaded not guilty Monday to helping cause the death of a pedestrian who was hit by an allegedly drunken driver last November on a Santa Fe street.

The attorney for Alfred Lovato, who was riding with Carlos Fierro after the two had spent a night drinking together, balked when the judge set a $25,000 cash, property or surety bond for Lovato.

Attorney Sam Bregman said Lovato, who resigned from the state police after the incident, is working for "close to minimum wage" and his house is in foreclosure.

District Judge Michael Vigil agreed to revisit the bond issue next Monday if Lovato, who remains free, can't come up with the required bond by then.

Bregman entered the not-guilty plea after strenuously arguing that the complaint outlining the charges against his client wrongly accuses Lovato of being the driver.

Attorney Sam Bregman said the complaint's wording amounts to perjury on the part of police and the special prosecutor in charge of the case and should require dismissal.

District Judge Michael Vigil disagreed but did rule that special prosecutor Donna Bevacqua-Young needs to amend the initial complaint to include a state statute indicating that Lovato is being charged as an accessory to the crime.

Lovato, 38, was in the passenger seat of a 2004 BMW driven by Fierro, 36, when it struck and killed William Tenorio, 46, of San Felipe Pueblo as Tenorio crossed Guadalupe Street in front of a local bar just before 2 a.m. Nov. 26, according to evidence already presented against Fierro. Lovato at the time was an off-duty member of Gov. Bill Richardson's security detail.

Fierro, a lawyer who has worked for both Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and then-Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M., faces trial on charges of vehicular homicide and causing a fatal accident. Fierro and Lovato had been drinking at two downtown bars for hours before the crash, and police say Fierro's blood-alcohol content was more than 2 1/2 times the legal driving limit.

Neither police reports nor testimony at Fierro's preliminary hearing indicated that anyone other than Fierro was driving the car, which fled the scene and was pulled over minutes later by a city police officer several blocks away.

When she charged Lovato almost two weeks ago, Bevacqua-Young attached a copy of a recent state Court of Appeals decision that affirmed the state's ability to charge a passenger in a car driven by a drunken man that plowed into another vehicle and caused two deaths and five injuries. In such a case, however, there must be evidence of "shared intent of conscious wrongdoing," the Court of Appeals ruled.

In the Court of Appeals case, the passenger and driver drank together until they were refused additional service at two bars, the passenger encouraged the driver to drive, and the passenger purchased more alcohol, which the two men drank before the crash.

Bregman said the theory, as it applies to the Lovato/Fierro case, "will require a lot of proof" that he thinks doesn't exist.

Vigil also sounded a bit leery with regard to the Court of Appeals decision. Until it was handed down May 11, he said, "there was some gray area as to the responsibility of a passenger" in a car being operated by a drunken driver who strikes and kills another person.

The Court of Appeals decision attempts to set out the proof required to charge a passenger, though the judge said he was concerned about the state Supreme Court's reaction to the decision.

"Ultimately the Supreme Court will have to rule on this," Vigil said. "It is a novel theory, though the aiding and abetting statute has been around for awhile."

Bevacqua-Young said the Supreme Court has not yet decided whether to hear the case.

Meanwhile, Tenorio's brother urged Vigil to set a bond equal to the $250,000 property bond he set for Fierro. David Tenorio said he's been a police officer in St. Louis, Mo., for 15 years and told the judge that cops are held to a higher standard because of the oath they take to protect and serve communities.

In fact, Lovato's involvement in the case "in some ways magnifies" the impact of his brother's death, David Tenorio said.

Vigil didn't view it that way.

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