Amanda Schottmuller sat quietly during her criminal court hearing on June 29, understanding little about what was happening. She didn’t know why a judge was trying to determine if she was dangerous.
“It didn’t make any sense,” Schottmuller, a 37-year-old former nurse who has struggled with depression, bipolar disorder and substance abuse for the past 10 years, later said. “I’ve never tried to harm anyone in my life.”
About two weeks earlier, police arrested Schottmuller for trespassing at a gas station in Edgewood, New Mexico, about 60 miles south of Santa Fe. She then allegedly kicked out the back window of a police car, trying to escape, so she was charged with destruction of property and resisting arrest. She also faced a burglary charge for breaking into a Walgreens a week earlier and allegedly stealing a Mountain Dew and three packs of cigarettes. She pleaded not guilty.
Though no one was hurt in these incidents, a Santa Fe County prosecutor sought to hold Schottmuller in jail without bond while she awaited trial, arguing to a judge that her erratic behavior made her a danger to the public.
Four years ago, state law would not have allowed prosecutors to request that Schottmuller be held without bond. But in 2016, New Mexico voters approved a constitutional amendment to almost entirely eliminate cash bail. The change was designed to prevent low-risk defendants from getting stuck in jail before trial just because they couldn’t pay. But in practice — because the new law also allowed judges to deny bail in felony cases for the most dangerous defendants, without clearly defining what it meant to be “dangerous” — public defenders and policy experts say it’s had the unintended consequence of keeping more defendants in jail without any option of pretrial release at all.
From 2015 to 2016 — prior to the elimination of cash bail — only eight defendants were held in jail without bond across four New Mexico counties, including Santa Fe County, according to a University of New Mexico study. This year, from January to mid-October, at least 30 defendants in Santa Fe County alone were held without bond, according to data obtained by NBC News. Those include people accused of murder, but also those charged with nonviolent crimes, such as burglary, driving while intoxicated and drug possession.
“When this was sold to the voters in 2016, it was promised that it would only be used to detain the worst of the worst,” said Jennifer Burrill, a supervising attorney in the state public defender office’s Santa Fe division. “Unfortunately, that's not how it's being utilized.”
Both prosecutors and public defenders have criticized the state’s bail changes for a lack of clarity. Public defenders say the rules give prosecutors and judges too much discretion, while some district attorneys argue the broad definitions do not do enough to ensure the detention of violent offenders.
It’s unclear whether the changes have shrunk the jail population in New Mexico — though some judges and state officials have said the new system is working, citing decreases in the use of cash bonds (which are now used only if a defendant is considered a flight risk).
Advocates for pretrial reforms and policy experts say New Mexico offers a cautionary tale to other states considering eliminating bail — particularly because of the growing roster of people charged with nonviolent crimes who are detained without an option for release.
Unless states create clear rules that prioritize releasing people from jail, “what you will see is judges default much of the way they did to setting bail in previous kinds of cases, and now just imposing preventative detention,” said Insha Rahman, vice president of advocacy and partnerships at the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit research and policy organization that supports pretrial reforms.
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At Schottmuller’s June hearing, Matthew Carlisle, her public defender, argued that she did not pose a threat.
“Do we lock them up because it's just easier by inflating dangerousness or do we set conditions of release that require her to take steps for sobriety and push her to seek help for her mental anguish?” he said during the court hearing, held virtually because of Covid-19 restrictions. “And I beg the court that it chooses the latter.”
But at the end of the 35-minute hearing, the judge sided with prosecutors, ordering that Schottmuller be held without bond.
What counts as ‘dangerous’?
Schottmuller said she became depressed in 2011, amid what she described as a stressful custody battle over one of her two children. Her family said she struggled with drug abuse as well, but had never hurt anyone.
Before this year, Schottmuller had little on her criminal record other than traffic tickets. In 2018, she was charged with forgery, but the charges were dismissed after she completed probation, court records show.
Early this spring, Schottmuller stopped taking her mental health medications, without which she was disoriented or confused, her father, Richard Roberts, said. On March 30, Schottmuller was arrested for damaging property at an Albuquerque bank, a misdemeanor that was later dismissed.
