A look at the numbers in the DWI debate
May 4—District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies recently released statistics she says reflect misdemeanor DWI conviction rates under her administration and that of her predecessor, Marco Serna.
The rates — which the DA said were as close to an apples-to-apples comparison as she could get — appear to illustrate her rate is nearly double in some cases what it was during Serna's administration. He served from 2017 to 2020.
However, for a variety of reasons, Carmack-Altwies' self-reported conviction rates are different from those reported by several other agencies that track the data.
According to Carmack-Altwies' data, the conviction rates look like this:
* 2018 (Serna's administration): 45% conviction rate.
* 2019 (Serna's administration): 56% conviction rate.
* 2020 (Serna's administration): 36% conviction rate.
* 2021 (Carmack-Altwies administration): 68% conviction rate.
* 2022 (Carmack-Altwies administration): 87% conviction rate.
* 2023 (Carmack-Altwies administration): incomplete data, 87% conviction rate as of April 5.
However, the district attorney has used a slightly different formula for calculating her rates and those she attributes to Serna's administration. In calculating Serna's rates, she divided the total number of cases filed by law enforcement by the total number of convictions. In calculating her own rate, the DA divided the total number of cases her office deemed viable for prosecution — after culling nearly half, in some instances — by the total number of convictions.
The practical effect is Serna's rates reflect a percentage of the total cases filed, while her own rate reflects the percentage of a group of pre-screened cases she has won.
Asked whether that was fair, Carmack-Altwies wrote in an email: "Absolutely. As we have maintained and stressed, in the criminal justice system there is a significant distinction between a case that is declined as not viable for prosecution versus a case that proceeds and is later dismissed."
When The New Mexican applied the two different methods of calculation to the data provided by the DA's office, the differences between the two prosecutors' convictions rates was less dramatic.
When the method the DA used to calculate her own rate was applied, the rates looked like this:
* 2018 (Serna): 83%
* 2019 (Serna): 89%
* 2020 (Serna): 91%
* 2021 (Carmack-Altwies): 68%
* 2022 (Carmack-Altwies): 87%
* 2023 (Carmack-Altwies): incomplete data but she reports 87% as of April 5.
When the method the DA used to calculate Serna's rate was applied, the rates look like this:
* 2018 (Serna): 45%
* 2019 (Serna): 56%
* 2020 (Serna): 36%
* 2021 (Carmack-Altwies): 37%
* 2022 (Carmack-Altwies): 61%
* 2023 (Carmack-Altwies): incomplete data.
Conviction rates reported in the New Mexico Judiciary's annual DWI report (rounded to nearest whole percent):
* 2018 (Serna): 51%
* 2019 (Serna): 43%
* 2020 (Serna): 39%
* 2021 (Carmack-Altwies): 30%
* 2022 (Carmack-Altwies): 47%
* 2023 (Carmack-Altwies): report not yet completed.
The rates calculated using the total numbers of case filed seem to correlate more closely with those generated by the New Mexico judiciary and Mothers Against Drunk Driving, though both organizations use different methods.
MADD calculates its rates based on fiscal year so the year-by-year comparison of their data isn't direct.
However MADD, which has a dedicated court monitor who follows cases from start to finish, provided The New Mexican a conviction rate that had been calculated by calendar year for 2022.
That rate, which MADD calculated this month, was 59.7%, according to data the nonprofit provided last week.
As a whole, the available data indicates misdemeanor DWI conviction rates in Santa Fe Magistrate Court cratered in 2020 and 2021 — perhaps MADD theorizes, in part because of the pandemic and in part because of the implementation of the DA's policy of dismissing and refiling later.
According to her own data, Carmack-Altwies dismissed and did not refile 181 of the 400 cases filed by law enforcement in 2021 after deeming them nonviable to proceed to trial.
In 2022, the office declined to prosecute a smaller percentage of the cases — 91 of 298 — and the conviction rate rebounded, according to both MADD and the District Attorney's Office.
That upward trend seems to be continuing in 2023, according to MADD and the District Attorney's Office figures, but the improved rate is still only slightly higher than historic rates for the district.
"Since the First Judicial District has initiated its 'initial dismissal policy,' the adjudication proportions (between guilty and dismissed) of misdemeanor DWI cases in Santa Fe have returned to roughly equal their pre Covid high-point of 2016/2017," MADD state Executive Director Katrina Latka wrote in an email.
Santa Fe County's DWI program director Rachel O'Connor said her data shows substantially fewer people are being convicted of DWI and referred to the county for supervision and fewer people are being being required by the state Department of Transportation to install ignition interlocks — mandatory for anyone convicted of DWI — since the District Attorney's Office began implementing the initial dismissal policy.
According to graphs O'Connor provided, the number of DWI cases filed into Magistrate Court has remained relatively stable since 2017 but the number of people being convicted and referred for supervision and a behavioral health assessment fell from 239 in 2019 to 112 in 2020, to 81 in 2021.
The number of people the program supervises did increase to 157 in 2022. However, O'Connor noted, Santa Fe County also monitors the number of ignition interlocks installed each year. That number dropped drastically the first full year of the policy, falling from 178 in 2020 to 53 in 2021. That number also rebounded in 2022, to 112, according to the county's data, but is still lower than any other year besides 2020 going back 20 years.
"We have a slight bump up in interlocks this year; that's good. But overall we've seen continuing trend of a decrease in the number of people getting prosecuted, getting convicted and getting the sanctions they are sentenced to in court," O'Connor said.
"We firmly stand by our case-by-case evaluation and comparison of different data systems," District Attorney's Office spokesman Nathan Lederman wrote in an email Thursday. "The FJDA is transparent, and the information is on our website for all to see, compare and evaluate. The source is a cross comparison between AOC's numbers and the FJDA's internal system. As we have repeatedly stated, no one has managed to go case-by-case through our information, measure it against our policy, and show that our information is incorrect."
