COMMENTARY: The name Matthew Coyte probably isn’t familiar to most Dona Ana County residents, but perhaps it should be.
Coyte is an attorney in Albuquerque who specializes in cases involving the abuse and neglect of prisoners. He hit the motherlode in 2012, a $22 million jury award, one of the largest ever in the history of federal civil rights cases involving an inmate. All as a result of the horrific conditions at the Dona Ana County Detention Center, and at the expense of the county taxpayers.
The case of Stephen Slevin should be familiar to most residents, as it drew national shame to our county. Headlines and news stores throughout the nation told the story of the man left in solitary confinement and so badly neglected that at one point he was forced to pull his own tooth. All of the stories were accompanied by a photo of Slevin looking like he had just crawled out from the cave where he had been living for months.
County Commissioners responded to the wave of national negative publicity by defending the detention center and insisting that it was all Slevin’s fault. He wanted to be in solitary confinement, they said. But, after agreeing to a $15.5 million settlement, they were forced to issue a half-hearted apology.
“The Board of County Commissioners deeply regrets the harm Mr. Slevin suffered during this period,” they wrote in a press release.
That regret did not lead to changes in the leadership at the detention center. When the Sun-News published an editorial demanding the firing of director Chris Barela, the editorial board was told by commissioners that Barela was the only one who understood the detention center and could make the needed reforms.
And so he kept his job.
He kept his job again in 2016 after being arrested on criminal charges of misusing thousands of dollars from a fund set up for inmates. District Attorney Mark D’Antonio joined in a press conference at the time of Barela’s arrest, but then later dropped the charges without an explanation. It wasn’t until after Barela was arrested for marijuana possession that commissioners were forced to make a change in leadership.
The above-mentioned press release with the apology to Slevin wasn’t about contrition. The one line of regret was overshadowed by the praise commissioners lavished upon themselves for increased spending at the detention center.
“In the wake of this large settlement, we can say definitively that we have learned from the past,” the press release said. “We can also say with confidence that we are leading the way for the future.”
Coyte was back in the news recently, after filing two new lawsuits alleging abuse of inmates at the detention center.
In one case, a female inmate alleges that she was strip-searched within view of a male guard. When she requested to file a complaint, guards retaliated against her by placing her in solitary confinement for 85 days. With allegations that harken back to Slevin, she says the cell had no hot water and ran out of toilet paper. The burnt food served to her was so bad that she lost 20 pounds.
The second lawsuit was filed by a 55-year-old man who alleges that jail staff failed to provide medical treatment after he had suffered a heart attack. They laughed and joked instead, he alleges.
Neither case has been proven in court, and I don’t assume that all of the allegations are true. But I do suspect that the county still has more to learn. Daniel Peters, who was hired in September as the new director at the detention center, will lead that effort.
Walter Rubel can be reached at waltrubel@gmail.com