A New Mexico Court Upholds the Sentencing for a 2011 Triple Murder
The state Supreme Court today upheld the first-degree felony murder convictions of a Santa Fe County man who killed three members of a northern New Mexico family when he was 16-years-old.
In a unanimous opinion, the state’s highest court concluded that the constitutional rights of Nicholas Ortiz were not violated when he was sentenced as an adult without a special proceeding to determine whether he was amenable to treatment or rehabilitation as a juvenile. State law requires such a proceeding – known as an “amenability hearing” – for juvenile offenders, other than those from ages 15 to 18 who are convicted of first-degree murder, a category considered “serious youth offenders.”
“We conclude that the sentencing procedure applied to Defendant that did not afford him an amenability hearing does not violate the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment,” the Court wrote in an opinion by Justice David K. Thomson.
