District Attorney candidates' debate ‘dumpster fire’

There is much distinguishing the two men running for district attorney, nearly all of it on display during an Oct. 15 debate at the Picacho Hills Country Club. 

Nestled into the country club's spare dining area, overlooking the golf course and Organ Mountains, the first noticeable difference between the candidates was their attire: Democrat Fernando Macías wore a navy blue suit with a crisp white shirt and no tie, with black and gold cufflinks. His Republican rival, trial attorney Michael Cain, wore a black suit with ruffled blue shirt, rings on each ring finger and a print tie depicting bottles of Tabasco sauce.

“This office is burning down right now,” Macías said in his opening remarks. “And it has been for the last decade. The number of successful convictions has continued to go down. The number of attorneys that are in place is a crime in itself. So, I'm asking you to be very selective in this race in terms of who really has the skills to run the office.” 

Macías has been a district judge, a state senator, a public defender and leader of a border development group as well as Doña Ana County manager.

Cain highlighted his years in the courtroom: “I have a total of about 25 years of trial experience, regularly appearing in front of the courts. I'm considered one of the better trial attorneys, especially criminal trial attorneys, in the state.” 

The two clashed on key issues throughout the debate, including prosecutor retention, case dismissals, a state Supreme Court rule, homelessness, mental health and the county jail. 

The debate, hosted by the Picacho Hills Property Owners Association, was one of the final forums of this election cycle. The incumbent, Gerald Byers, was ousted in the Democratic primary by Macías in a race with four candidates. Cain won the Republican primary unopposed. 

Both candidates offered a grim portrait of the office's current state.

“It's been described by several judges to me as a dumpster fire,” Cain said. “I think that is being very generous.”

Macías and Cain both said the office’s struggle to retain prosecutors is harming its ability to perform its function. As a result, the two lawyers said, the community is worse off. 

“There are 70 positions in this office, 21 of them are attorneys. And as we speak, there are eight attorneys that are having the responsibility to prosecute hundreds, if not thousands of cases a year,” Macías said. “That’s completely unsustainable.”

According to appropriation requests sent to the New Mexico Legislature and obtained by the Las Cruces Bulletin, the office lost ten attorneys and retained three between August 2022 and 2023.

Additionally, none of the attorneys listed in the 2020 appropriation requests remain in the office four years later. Byers, who took over the office in January 2021, attributed the high turnover to a competitive job market during debates and interviews with news outlets.

However, his opponents said the high turnover was due to bad leadership that only new leadership could fix. When debate moderator Walt Rubel asked Macías and Cain how they would stem the tide of fleeing attorneys, they gave different answers. 

Macías said it boils down to a lack of leadership and skill, and remarked that good attorneys are not necessarily effective managers: “You have to have someone who can come in, who can inspire, who is there; someone who has the experience in recruiting attorneys and staff, someone who has the experience of bringing individuals together to solve the problem, someone who will work side by side with the other attorneys in the office and not close themselves up in their office, never prosecuting a case directly.”

Cain agreed that the problem started with “a real lack of leadership” but said he had compiled a list of attorneys who had agreed to work for him. 

“There are senior (attorneys) that live in this county, that live in surrounding counties, that commute every day. Two of them I spoke with on Wednesday of last week in Deming. … Each of them has over 25 years of experience. Both of them said, I'll come work for you day one,” Cain said. 

Cain praised police, arguing they were fulfilling their responsibility to the criminal justice process via criminal investigations, but the District Attorney's Office is letting them down. Yet he also promised that, as top prosecutor, he would implement practices forcing police to present more complete cases. 

Cain said that if he were elected, the days of weak cases going before the court only to be dismissed weeks or months later would be over. To do this, Cain said he would push more cases through a “preliminary hearing,” which is basically a mini-trial where the prosecutors present their evidence, the defense rebuts and the judge determines whether the case will move forward. 

Macías argued this strategy was time-consuming to the point of being ineffective. 

“There are too many cases to abandon the grand jury process. There are too many cases. A preliminary hearing has to be a mini-trial in front of a magistrate judge. That means that all of the staff that you have, especially if you're stuck with eight or ten attorneys, are not going to have the personnel to be able to do it. You cannot accomplish it. It is not a workable system,” Macías said, adding that for some crimes like domestic violence, that extra time is a death knell for the case. 

Later in the debate, Cain clarified that not all cases would utilize this process. 

Macías and Cain now look to the voters to decide the future of the office.