SANTA FE – The trial of a prominent Democratic state senator on drunken and reckless driving charges on Monday delved into police body camera video of a watery-eyed politician in apparently urine-stained shorts, struggling to count backward on a field sobriety test in the aftermath of a car wreck.
During testimony from police officers and medical personnel, prosecutors highlighted that Sen. Richard Martinez of Ojo Caliente refused a breath test to determine his blood-alcohol level after his car slammed into the back of another vehicle at a stoplight in the community of Española.
Police body camera video was repeatedly reviewed in court that shows Martinez responding to officers with halting speech and failing a sobriety test that required he count backward from 31 to 14.
Martinez has pleaded not guilty to charges of aggravated drunken driving and reckless driving.
In opening statements, defense attorney David Foster highlighted that Martinez may have become dazed as his head struck his car windshield and predicted that evidence will not prove that he was intoxicated.
In the police body camera video, a local fire official at the scene of the car wreck said, “I think that he did pop his head.” But a emergency room doctor who examined Martinez that night found no indications of head trauma.
Physician Valeria Merl ordered an X-ray scan of Martinez’s neck as a required precaution for patients who appear to have been drinking alcohol and may have dulled senses – and found no injury. She had smelled alcohol on Martinez’s breath, but knew nothing more about his drinking that night.
Martinez originally told police he had one or two beers, and later corrected to say he three glasses of wine and no beer.
Foster pried into procedural requirements that may have been overlooked by Española police Officer Dustin Chavez as he applied an alternative for a field sobriety test to a suspect in an ambulance with a broken ankle who could not walk. He showed that Chavez diverged from some detailed requirements in reading an implied-consent warning to Martinez about the consequences of refusing a test of his blood-alcohol level.
Martinez, a former magistrate and current chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, sat silently through the first day of the non-jury trial in state district court.
A couple in the car hit by Martinez’s vehicle described an impact amid screeching tires that pushed their car into an intersection and the back and neck pain they have endured as a result of the wreck.
“It felt like my head was going to be detached from the base of my skull,” said Johnny Sisneros, the driver of the car that was rear-ended. Sisneros said he saw Martinez attempting to conceal his “tomato”-red face from recognition in the aftermath of the wreck.
Martinez is running for reelection in 2020, bucking calls for his resignation by Republican Party leaders. Prosecutors filed as trial evidence photographs of Martinez’s crumpled Mercedes SUV with a customized red “SEN 5” license plate – a reference to the senator’s legislative district.
In 2018, Republican state Rep. Monica Youngblood was voted out of office after her conviction on aggravated drunken driving charges. She brought up her advocacy work for police as a lawmaker in a widely circulated video of her arrest at a police checkpoint in Albuquerque.
Overruling objections by the defense on Monday, state District Court Judge Francis Mathew allowed prosecutors with the state attorney general’s office to play segments of police body camera video footage of Martinez speaking with police from the driver’s seat of his car in the immediate aftermath of the crash.
Later at a hospital, Martinez reacted to his arrest with disbelief and the words, “Jesus Christ, are you really doing this?”
Special Assistant Attorney General Mark Probasco noted a dark stain on Martinez’s denim shorts and asked a police officer in court why it may be relevant.
“This is an indicator of someone who has been intoxicated, highly intoxicated, being unable to hold their urine,” officer Chavez told the court.
Testimony was scheduled to continue Tuesday.
