District Attorney Angela "Spence" Pacheco of Santa Fe said Tuesday that "there is no excuse for it."

A man whose own attorney once called him the "poster boy" for DWI problems in New Mexico seems to have slipped through the cracks once again.

A state district judge on July 18 was forced to dismiss a felony DWI case filed against John Paul Chavez, 51, who has at least 11 drunken-driving arrests on his record and at least eight convictions.

The reason for the dismissal? The District Attorney's Office failed for more than five months to have a prosecutor enter an appearance in the case or turn over evidence against Chavez to his latest defense lawyer.

Chavez became notorious in 2002 when, in a self-described drunken blackout, he ran down Colorado tourists Michael and Helen "Elly" Cote as they crossed a street near the Plaza, dragging the woman under his truck for several blocks and leaving her in a six-week coma with physical and mental limitations that remain to this day.

District Judge Michael Vigil sentenced Chavez to the maximum 8 1/2 years in prison for his guilty plea in that case.

His first nine DWI arrests in Santa Fe, between 1982 and 2002, had led to incarceration that totaled less than three weeks.

After he ended six-plus years in prison in April 2009 (some time was spent in the Santa Fe County jail before he was sentenced), and parole wrapped up in January 2010, Chavez was arrested twice in 2010 on charges of driving without a license. He was arrested a third time in December when state police say he drove away from Cheeks nightclub on Cerrillos Road while drunk and twice refused to submit to a Breathalyzer test.

That was the case the judge was forced to dismiss July 18 with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled.

"This is so absurd," Elly Cote said Tuesday from her home in Durango, Colo. "This is outrageous, actually. The fact that he can continue doing this, that he gets out (of prison) and is back doing the same thing and the system still isn't doing anything about it. I just can't feel anything but full astonishment at this."

The district attorney agreed, even using many of the same words as both Elly and Michael Cote.

"This case, it's outrageous that it happened," Pacheco said. "It's hard for us to really say anything about it without making it sound like we're trying to give an excuse, and I am not doing that."

Pressed for more explanation, however, Pacheco said the case was assigned to former Chief Deputy District Attorney Charles Baldonado, who has been in and out of the hospital for medical reasons for months — including between Chavez's Feb. 14 arraignment and a July 15 docket call in which his case was finally dismissed.

Baldonado, whose resignation from the office just became official in late July, never entered an official appearance in open court, and at three different court hearings defense attorney Val Whitley pleaded with a judge to force the state to hand over evidence in the case.

Normally, discovery — the exchange of evidence — is legally required within about a few weeks of arraignment. During at least three court appearances at which Chavez appeared since February, Whitley asked State District Judge Vigil to compel the state to provide discovery.

"Even though I filed motions and kept asking the judge in court for the discovery, nothing ever happened," Whitley said. "No one even entered an appearance, and I let the court know several times."

Whitley said before the case was dismissed, Chavez had been on electronic monitoring for nearly six months without violation. Because of the dates of some of Chavez's prior DWI cases and problems with legally proving other convictions, prosecutors believed they only would have been able to prove he had three prior DWI convictions, making his latest charge a fourth-offense case. That would be a third-degree felony that carries between six and 18 months behind bars upon conviction.

Pacheco said she had thought her office had every one of Baldonado's cases covered in his absence.

She also said the Cotes have every right to be angry.

"Every case is important," Pacheco said. "There are sometimes legitimate reasons cases are dismissed. In this case, though, we did have a very sick attorney who couldn't handle his caseload, and we did the best we could to help out. We thought we had them all covered."

Baldonado's recent resignation isn't the only vacancy in Pacheco's office affecting criminal case coverage. While the District Attorney's Office between June 24 and Monday, Aug. 1, handled 932 criminal cases in front of state District Judges Stephen Pfeffer and Vigil, they did so with as many as eight vacancies among the 24 attorney positions budgeted for her office.

The prosecutors who have left for various reasons since early June include: Baldonado, for medical reasons; Yvonne Chicoine and Olga Serafimova, who took jobs with the state Attorney General's Office; Thomas Dow, who left for a job as general counsel for the Secretary of State's Office; Shanon Riley, who left for a job in Albuquerque; Jennifer Sanchez, who moved to Washington, D.C.; and Stephanie Aldridge, who moved to Alamogordo. Deputy District Attorney Krishna Singh, meanwhile, is on temporary medical leave after surgery due to an injury suffered competing in a triathlon last month.

Pacheco said none of that is a reason for a criminal case to slip through the cracks and acknowledged the handling of the Chavez case is embarrassing. "It's awful what happened," she said.

The Cotes, meanwhile, both said Tuesday they don't live a day without some reminder of how their lives changed on that September day in Santa Fe.

"When I think about all this, when I flash upon (Chavez), I don't know for sure anymore who I'm more angry with that this continues to happen," Elly Cote said. "The fact that he can continue to do this and the system can't seem to stop him is just a frustrating reality, I guess."

While Elly Cote has yet to regain any memory of that day, Michael Cote said he still struggles with trying to forget it as daily reminders haunt him.

"It's heartbreaking," Michael Cote said. "I mean, how many chances is this guy going to get to hurt people?"

Contact Geoff Grammer at 986-3076 or ggrammer@sfnewmexican.com. Read his blog at santafecrime.com.