The Twohig Law Firm

The Public Defender system is directed by a Chief Public Defender, appointed by the Governor, and sitting on the Governor’s cabinet. The Governor also appoints the Director of Public Safety, head of the department which has statewide law enforcement responsibility in many areas, including the State Police. It is obvious that the Governor has a conflict of interest.

The new Governor is a career prosecutor. As a lawyer, she will undoubtedly understand this conflict of interest better than our previous governor, who vetoed a bill which passed both branches of the legislature with very few no votes, which would have established a Public Defender Commission. I hope the bill will be revived in the upcoming legislature, so that the Public Defender’s independence is assured by law.

For the first time since the changes in the law following the not guilty verdict for the man who attempted to assasinate President Reagan, an insanity defense has been successful in New Mexico. Ray Twohig represents Diana Willis whose 15 month old son died of exposure after she left him in a remote area of New Mexico naked and alone.  She was charged with child abuse resulting in death, a first degree felony with a mandatory 18 year prison sentence. The Twohig Law Firm Team established, through an extensive investigation of her background and her family’s mental health history as well as all of the circumstances concerning her alleged crime, that she suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and was delusional at the time she and little Richie were running naked away from imagined tarantulas and other spiders.

The District Attorney entered a Nolle Prosequi with prejudice dismissing the charges permanently on the basis of Diana’s insanity at the time of the offense. This was a highly unusual result. After the not guilty by reason of insanity verdict from the Reagan assasination attempt, New Mexico followed most states in adopting the alternative verdict of Guilty but Insane. All insanity claims tried since then in the state had resulted in either guilty verdicts, or verdicts of guilty but insane. Prosecutors insisted upon trials in which the compromise verdict of Guilty but Insane was very likely, and defendants frequently entered into plea agreements because they and their lawyers realized a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity was highly unlikely.

The Twohig Law Firm did not accept that compromise result as inevitable in this case but, instead, demonstrated to the prosecutors that a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity was likely under the circumstances which were detailed in a 55 page psychosocial history presented to experts and the prosecution, accompanied by two notebooks crammed full of proof.

Coincidentally, the DA’s dismissal in the Willis case came on the same day that Governor Richardson signed into law a bill repealing the verdict of Guilty but Insane in New Mexico. No longer will Defendants be forced into guilty pleas in fear of that compromise verdict, nor be convicted even though legal insanity caused the crime. The Willis case is a bright light in the dismal history of mental health defenses for 30 years. The Twohig Law Firm team approach to the case included dedicated and sometimes extraordinarily difficult work by Eda Gordon, Maurice Moya and Regina Torrez along with Ray Twohig.