| On June 27, 2018, 35-year-old Jason Sanchez was charged in Carlsbad, New Mexico, with stalking a woman known as J.C. and violating a restraining order she had obtained in 2017. The arrest warrant said the alleged crimes occurred between November 1, 2017, and May 31, 2018.
Sanchez, who lived in San Antonio, Texas, and J.C., who lived in Carlsbad, had met in 2014 and dated for several months. J.C. became pregnant and told Sanchez that she didn’t want a relationship but that they would co-parent their child. Their son was born in August 2015, and the couple reached a custody agreement later that year.
During the next few years, the agreement was modified several times, and the relationship between Sanchez and J.C. grew increasingly acrimonious.
On November 1, 2017, a judge issued the restraining order, which barred Sanchez from contacting J.C. except as allowed in a modification of their agreement reached in March 2017.
At Sanchez’s first trial, in Eddy County District Court, the state presented Sanchez’s texts and emails as evidence. Lieutenant Eric Threlkeld of the Eddy County Sheriff’s Office testified as an expert on domestic violence and said Sanchez’s controlling behavior correlated with a high risk of physical violence.
The jury convicted Sanchez on both charges on August 2, 2019. Prior to sentencing, Judge Lisa Riley questioned Sanchez’s public defender about his failure to present any exculpatory evidence or to object to Threlkeld’s testimony and the state’s characterization of that testimony during its closing argument. On August 22, 2019, Judge Riley threw out the convictions and ordered a new trial, saying that “the defense did not subject the State’s case to meaningful adversarial testing.”
Sanchez’s second trial began on July 6, 2020.
J.C. testified about her relationship with Sanchez and the texts and emails she received from him. These included emails Sanchez sent to J.C.’s employer, telling them about a contempt order J.C. had received in the custody case and saying that she was dating a coworker in violation of company policy.
In one email, Sanchez told J.C. “I am not the least bit concerned about whether you breathe or don’t. I don’t care.” J.C. testified that she was “actually scared” and that she felt “helpless.” She said that she felt Sanchez was trying to get her fired.
Another exchange involved J.C.’s cellphone service, which had been stopped for non-payment. Sanchez bought her replacement phones and told her that he had done so to allow her to stay in compliance with the custody agreement. He said he was the only person helping her financially.
J.C. testified that the communications admitted into court between her and Sanchez were “not even close” to all of the messages she received. She did not feel like the restraining order was protecting her “because he was still contacting me, and contacting my work, and contacting people that I associate with. So I felt like it was never going to end and he was just going to be able to do what he wanted with me.” She said she felt frightened, intimidated, and threatened.
During cross-examination, J.C. was asked about modifications to the custody agreement. The initial 2015 agreement had not been admitted into evidence; only the March 2017 modification was introduced at trial.
Threlkeld again testified as an expert witness about domestic violence. He said that “abusers attempt to make victims believe they need to rely on the defendant for financial stability.” He said that Sanchez fit the profile of an abuser and that although individual acts may not be a crime, “when you put them into the context of how those things are affecting the victim, and the repeated pattern that occurs, it can rise to the level of stalking.”
Threlkeld testified that the difference between harassment and stalking is the victim’s level of fear, and associated stalking with future physical violence. He said the evidence “[met] the threshold of a stalking case.”
Eddy County Sheriff’s Agent Jared Rostro testified that he met with J.C. on November 27, 2017, about her concerns that Sanchez was not abiding by the restraining order. He said that she appeared “visibly shaken.”
Rostro testified that he spoke by telephone with Sanchez the next day. According to Rostro, Sanchez acknowledged that his texts and emails to J.C. were “somewhat excessive.” Rostro testified that he told Sanchez he was investigating him for violating the restraining order, and that Sanchez called him again to ask about what conduct was allowed under the order.
Rostro testified that on November 29, 2017, he prepared a “domestic violence lethality screening” with J.C. Based on her responses, Rostro testified, he concluded that Sanchez was not following the restraining order. Three months later, Rostro prepared a second screening. J.C.’s answers to the second screening were similar to the first, although she now answered “no” to a question about whether Sanchez had a gun.
Rostro drew up an arrest warrant in late June 2018. He testified that neither he nor other officers interviewed Sanchez about J.C.’s answers to the screening.
In closing arguments, the prosecutor said that any communication from Sanchez to J.C. that did not occur by FaceTime at 7 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday, or Saturday, was a violation of the restraining order. “He’s put into text his thought process that he does not care if she dies,” the prosecutor said. “We all know how dangerous it is to think, because as we think we act.”
In her closing, Sanchez’s attorney argued that his communication with J.C. was common in custody cases and not malicious, as required for stalking. She also said that Threlkeld was not an expert in custody disputes. She said Sanchez was not trying to manipulate J.C., but rather acting out of frustration.
During rebuttal, the prosecutor said Sanchez had not presented any evidence that his behavior was normal in custody cases. Sanchez’s attorney objected that the prosecutor was shifting the burden of proof to the defense, and Judge Riley reminded the jury that this burden rested with the state.
The jury convicted Sanchez of aggravated stalking and violating a restraining order on July 9, 2020. On the stalking conviction, Judge Riley sentenced Sanchez to 18 months in prison, but credited him for the 18 months he had spent in jail awaiting trial. He was placed on parole for a year. On the conviction for violating a restraining order, Judge Riley sentenced Sanchez to 364 days in prison but suspended 284 days and gave him credit for 80 days in jail awaiting trial. She also placed him on supervised probation for 284 days. .
Now represented by an appellate public defender, Sanchez moved for a new trial, and Judge Riley affirmed the jury’s verdict. In his appeal of that ruling, filed on August 24, 2022, Sanchez said he had been wrongfully convicted based on insufficient evidence, flawed jury instructions, and his trial attorney’s ineffective representation.
The motion said the stalking statute required that a defendant’s “pattern of conduct would place the individual in reasonable apprehension of death, bodily harm, sexual assault, confinement or restraint.” This change, in 2009, had replaced an earlier version, removing language that said stalking could “cause a reasonable person to fear for his safety.”
“Where the State presented extensive evidence of [J.C.’s] generalized fear, her fear was based on angry, hurtful statements that Jason did not care whether she lived, and wished a tragic accident would befall her,” the motion said. “He never threatened to actually harm her. While hurtful, the statements are not threats.” The motion also said that the state had not proved Sanchez’s intent to violate the restraining order.
The motion said that Judge Riley’s instructions wrongly included the word “harassment” and excluded “without lawful authority,” improperly giving jurors wider latitude to convict Sanchez for stalking.
The motion also said that Threlkeld’s testimony about Sanchez fitting the profile of a domestic abuser was misleading, and that the trial attorney was ineffective in her failure to object to this testimony.
In addition, the motion said the attorney was ineffective for failing to present a more complete record of the custody agreement between Sanchez and J.C. These records would have shown that the 2017 modification the state used to show stalking pertained only to where exchanges between the two parents took place and the time when the non-custodial parent could call the child. Other parts of the agreement, allowing Sanchez more leeway in contacting J.C., were still in effect, the motion said.
On December 20, 2022, the New Mexico Court of Appeals vacated Sanchez’s convictions based on insufficient evidence. “Defendant argues, and the State concedes, that ‘the State bore the burden of proof that the communications were not authorized by the [domestic matter]’ and that, in the absence of a comprehensive understanding of what was authorized in that case and the purpose of Defendant’s calls, the State failed to prove Defendant knowingly violated the order of protection.”
The ruling also noted, “there apparently were other court orders in the domestic matter, including a parenting plan, which governed communications between Defendant and [J.C.], that were not introduced into evidence at trial.”
The case was dismissed on February 2, 2023.
On April 24, 2023, Sanchez filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico against Eddy County, the sheriff’s office, Rostro and Threlkeld, seeking damages for his wrongful conviction. The lawsuit said that Rostro pursued the case because he had a close relationship with J.C. that made him “strongly dislike”
Sanchez. Rostro and Threlkeld later countersued the county, for improperly releasing their personnel information to Sanchez’s attorney, and Sanchez, for posting the material on Facebook. The claim against Sanchez was dismissed on September 12, 2024.
– Ken Otterbourg
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