New Mexico’s highest court has thrown out the second-degree murder conviction of a Valencia County man with an intellectual disability who was arrested as a teenager in the 2014 killing of his 12-year-old friend.
Brandon Villalobos, now 27, waited nearly six years in total to face trial in the killing after originally being arrested in 2014 when he was 15 years old. The delays, fueled by missteps by his public defender, prosecutors and others during proceedings to determine his competency to stand trial, ultimately interfered with Villalobos’ right to a speedy trial, the state Supreme Court found in an opinion handed down Monday.
“It is fair to say that the State failed to meet that responsibility here and, in doing so, allowed a teenage defendant with an intellectual disability to languish in jail for some three years and three months while his competency proceedings inched along at a glacial pace,” Justice Michael Vigil wrote in the unanimous opinion.
The ruling orders Villalobos’ case to be sent back to 13th Judicial District Court for it to toss his convictions and dismiss his indictment.
Assistant appellate defender Allison Jaramillo said in an interview that Villalobos must await a mandate from the Supreme Court before the District Court can start the process of releasing him from prison. She also lauded Monday’s opinion as an acknowledgement of injustices dating back years.
“The importance of the ruling is to really reaffirm the right to a speedy trial for all New Mexicans,” she said. “The court recognized that this almost six-year delay, beginning when Brandon was a teenager, was unconstitutional.”
Jessica Martinez, chief deputy district attorney for the 13th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, wrote in an email agency leaders were “disappointed but respect the Supreme Court’s ruling,” adding it effectively has no recourse to challenge the issue.
“The Supreme Court remanded the case back to the district court to dismiss the indictment, which means the case is dismissed in its entirety, the defendant will be released once that dismissal is issued, and the State will no longer have the jurisdiction to pursue any further action,” Martinez wrote.
The victim in the case was not named in the Supreme Court’s opinion, but was identified at the time by the Albuquerque Journal as 12-year-old Alex Madrid.
Villalobos led police to Madrid’s body in February of 2014, where they discovered the boy had been beaten to death while the two played, court records show. Villalobos was arrested and charged with first-degree murder in the killing.
But for years, his case languished as he went through protracted proceedings to determine whether he was competent to stand trial, the Supreme Court’s opinion states, noting Villalobos has an IQ of 64.
The delayed competency proceedings were fueled by errors on the part of his defense attorney such as misplacing records crucial to Villalobos’ evaluation, the justices found. But they also found the state could have done more to expedite the process and shared the blame in the delays.
Villalobos was eventually found competent to stand trial and did so in 2019, but that ended in a mistrial, the opinion states. He went to court again the next year, where he was acquitted of first-degree murder but convicted of second-degree murder and tampering with evidence. Villalobos was later sentenced as an adult — he was 22 years old by then — to a total of 18 years in prison, though he received credit for already serving nearly 7½ years.
Villalobos appealed the decision, in part arguing he was denied his right to speedy trial, but the state Court of Appeals disagreed, leading the appeal to the Supreme Court.
Jaramillo noted Villalobos’ attorney at the time was a contract public defender. Still, she said the delay in competency proceedings highlights the “overwhelm that a lot of public defender offices face in terms of caseload and a lack of resources.”
“But, as the opinion also recognizes, the prosecutors and the judge have their own responsibility and their own duty to monitor cases and to make sure that they’re moving through the system quickly,” Jaramillo said.
