In our last edition of News and Views, we highlighted a local news story about a man who fatally shot another man while on bail. Unfortunately, we’re back with another story of our state’s broken pretrial detention system.
Over the weekend, Angello Charley, accused of sexual assault last fall and released under with a GPS monitor, went to a 15-year-old’s home and tried to force her into sex, prosecutors say.
Charley was arrested last September for allegedly beating and raping a woman who refused to kiss him. Judge Britt Baca Miller said the account of the violent crime was “extremely terrifying,” but let him leave with an ankle monitor anyway.
The most striking difference between the last story – 18-year-old Devin Munford killed an acquaintance while out on an ankle monitor ahead of his trial for possession of a stolen firearm and a bottle of Xanax after firing the gun from his vehicle – and Charley is the defendants’ arguable predictability. A Bernalillo County public defender called Munford’s case an “outlier” because he didn’t have a record of violent crime when he was released on his own recognizance. Charley, on the other hand, freshly charged with two violent crimes against an individual, should have been an easy call for the judge.
But the most troubling similarity is that law enforcement was not immediately alerted when the defendants breached the terms of their release. In fact, KRQE reported that Charley wasn’t in custody and wouldn’t need to return to court until the end of the month for a hearing to determine if his conditions of release would be revoked. It wasn’t until three days after the first news story that Charley was remanded.
“Angello Charley is the second defendant in two weeks that we have had to move for their detention again because they’re accused of committing violent crimes while under GPS monitoring. In both instances, law enforcement was not contacted when this individual broke whatever boundaries they were supposed to be under,” Raúl Torrez, Bernalillo County District Attorney, told KRQE.
“We asked that he be detained, and now he’s accused of committing a murder while wearing a GPS monitor – all of this, all of this – shows the system isn’t working,” he told KOB.
Two of these disturbing and entirely preventable events in a month should be a wakeup call for our community – and yet another for our lawmakers.