NMSC News:
SANTA FE — State courts can order fines for contempt payable to a third party such as the New Mexico State Bar Foundation, the Supreme Court ruled today.
In a unanimous decision, the Court concluded that it was permissible for a district court to order a Taos attorney to pay a $1,000 contempt fine to the State Bar Foundation, which performs public service and educational work to promote access to civil legal services.
The district court imposed the fine on attorney Alan Maestas after finding him guilty of direct, punitive contempt for refusing court orders to proceed to trial in a criminal case in 2020. He also was sanctioned to 10 days in jail but it was suspended by the judge. Maestas appealed and the state Court of Appeals requested that the Supreme Court resolve a legal question of whether contempt fines could be made payable to a third party.
“We hold that Maestas’s fine payable to a third party is permitted under the judiciary’s inherent and uniquely broad contempt power and is constitutional,” the Court wrote in an opinion by Chief Justice David K. Thomson. “In addition, the Legislature has not imposed a relevant constraint on the type of fine ordered against Maestas.”
The justices clarified that “only fees collected, not fines imposed, by the judicial department are subject to the limitations of Article VI, Section 30 of the New Mexico Constitution.” That provision requires “all fees collected by the judicial department” be paid to the state treasury.
The Court rejected Maestas’s argument that contempt fines must be paid into the treasury.
“This is incorrect for two reasons: (1) a fine is not a fee and (2) the fine ordered payable to the Foundation was not collected by the judicial department,” the Court wrote.
The fine was imposed by the district court, the justices explained. The Court also reasoned that the “common legal usage of the terms ‘fee’ and ‘fine’ support our holding.” Fees are paid for services, according to Black’s Law Dictionary, but fines are penalties or punishments.
The justices made clear that an opinion by the Court in 2000 in the case Board of Commissioners v. Greacen, incorrectly concluded that “penalties or fines are synonymous with fees for the purposes” of the constitutional requirement that fees be paid to the treasury.
The Court ordered the Taos attorney’s case back to the Court of Appeals for consideration of other issues raised in his appeal, which is the second time Maestas has challenged the contempt case. The Court of Appeals affirmed his conviction for contempt in a 2022 ruling but ordered the case back to the district court for a new sentence. He initially had been sentenced to 30 days in jail as well as being ordered to pay a fine, court courts and restitution. The latest appeal involves the resentencing.