Roosevelt County prevails in lawsuit

PORTALES — A New Mexico Association of Counties news release last week trumpets a successful defense of a Roosevelt County civil rights lawsuit.

The lawsuit stemmed from a July 2, 2014, incident in which a Roosevelt County jail inmate hit a county employee with a pickax and then fled in a county vehicle.

Senovio Mendoza had a violent history and was facing murder charges prior to the incident at the Roosevelt County fairgrounds.

Leroy Manzanares, the county employee, was left for dead, but survived the extensive head injury, records show. Mendoza was soon captured and returned to custody.

Mendoza, 36, was apprehended and charged newly within the same month of that incident. In February 2016 an Eddy County jury convicted him of the pending first-degree murder charge, for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment. The following month he pleaded guilty to kidnapping, armed robbery and escape from jail in connection to the Roosevelt County incident; for that, he was sentenced to 18 years in the Department of Corrections.

Manzanares filed a lawsuit against Roosevelt County, alleging his injuries resulted from inadequate supervision by jail staff.

A U.S. district court judge this summer dismissed the lawsuit.

“Federal District Court Judge (James) Browning ruled in favor of the county defendants on all federal claims,” the NMAC news release read.

“The federal and state claims were successfully dismissed and a case that has been pending since 2014 is now over.”

Susan Mayes, a representative for NMAC, told The News that the judgment may be a few months past, but the association representing the state’s counties was simply a little behind on declaring some recent successes.

Mendoza was facing first-degree murder charges when he was transferred to Roosevelt County from Carlsbad’s Eddy County Detention Center, which was also a defendant named in the ensuing litigation.

Manzanares’ injuries “were covered by workers’ compensation,” according to the news release.

Judge Browning wrote that “Eddy County’s failure to classify Mendoza as a dangerous inmate and Mendoza’s resulting transfer to Roosevelt County Detention, while perhaps careless, does not amount to conduct that shocks the conscience.” Similarly, he wrote, “Roosevelt County’s failure to re-classify Mendoza does not amount to conduct that shocks the conscience.”

Browning also addressed assertions from Manzanares that his injuries resulted from inadequate supervision by jail staff, noting there wasn’t evidence presented indicating any such pattern.

“That Mendoza — one inmate — was misclassified does not create a reasonable inference that the misclassification resulted from a widespread policy of poor classification procedures or of a failure to train,” he wrote. “That conclusion is not to suggest that a failure to classify inmates’ security level is not troubling conduct...”

The NMAC news release quoted Roosevelt County Manager Amber Hamilton as stating the county “was pleased with the court’s ruling and long ago moved on from this unfortunate incident” and that “the Detention Center is closing out its second full year as an accredited facility.”

Attempts to reach Manzanares were unsuccessful.