By Phaedra Haywood
The Santa Fe New Mexican
SANTA FE COUNTY, N.M. — A woman accused of faking her own kidnapping and leading police on a deadly pursuit in 2022 faces two life sentences after a Santa Fe County jury convicted her of two counts of first-degree murder.
The panel of five men and seven women deliberated for about four hours Thursday before finding Jeannine Jaramillo, 49, guilty of causing the deaths of Santa Fe police officer Robert Duran, 43, and retired firefighter Frank Lovato, 62, of Las Vegas, N.M. The men’s vehicles collided head-on March 2, 2022, as Jaramillo — who had convinced police she was being held against her will and her life was in danger — led Duran and other officers in a wrong-way chase on Interstate 25.
Friends and family of Duran and Lovato embraced each other and wept outside the Santa Fe courtroom after the verdict was read but declined to comment.
Duran was the first Santa Fe officer killed in the line of duty since 1933.
District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies touted the victory for her office. “We’re so relieved, and we’re very happy with the jury’s verdict ... and glad mostly that this is over for the families,” she told a television reporter outside the courthouse.
“This has been a 2 1/2-year nightmare for them, and I’m glad we got the justice for Robert Duran and Frank Lovato that they both deserved,” she added.
Along with two counts of murder, Jaramillo was found guilty of four related crimes following her five-day trial in the state District Court.
The additional convictions — aggravated fleeing, receiving or transferring a stolen motor vehicle, making a false report and great bodily injury by vehicle — add years to her possible sentence. The last charge is connected to injuries another motorist sustained during the chaotic chase.
District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer said she plans to hold a sentencing hearing for Jaramillo sometime next month.
Jaramillo’s attorney, David Silva, said he plans to file an appeal after the sentencing. In his closing argument and during cross-examinations, he raised questions about whether the case met the criteria for the first-degree murder charges and whether officers had violated their agency’s policy on high-speed pursuits.
“During the directed verdict stage, I believe the judge should have dismissed the first-degree homicide charges based on case law,” he said in an interview outside the courthouse.
Complicated charges
Jurors had several options when deliberating on the two homicide counts because the state charged Jaramillo under two different theories of first-degree murder that don’t require proof of premeditation:
- Felony murder, when a defendant is accused of killing someone while committing another felony crime — in this case aggravated fleeing.
- Depraved mind murder, which requires the state to prove the defendant showed disregard for human life and should have known their actions would lead to great bodily harm or death.
The jury also could have convicted Jaramillo of homicide by vehicle due to reckless driving, a crime punishable by six years in prison.
The law does not require jurors to agree on the theory of first-degree murder as long as they all agree the elements of one of the crimes — felony or depraved mind murder — was met, Carmack-Alwies noted in her closing argument.
The court did not provide a breakdown of how jurors applied the two theories when they voted to convict her.
They learned during the trial Jaramillo, an Albuquerque resident, had stolen a Chevy Malibu in Las Vegas and had driven it to Santa Fe with a man named Jerry Chavez, who testified at the trial.
Chavez, who referred to Jaramillo as his wife, said the two had spent a night together in Malibu in an apartment complex parking lot and got into an argument the next morning. When he wouldn’t leave the vehicle, he said, Jaramillo asked a passerby to call 911, claiming she was being held against her will.
The man dialed 911, and Chavez said he fled as he heard sirens approaching.
Jaramillo drove away and was immediately pursued by an officer, who was joined by three others as Jaramillo led them on a chase on St. Michael’s Drive and then I-25, eventually heading south in the northbound lanes, according to trial testimony.
She continued even after Duran and Lovato crashed, coming to a stop only after she sideswiped a pickup and the Malibu became disabled.
She told officers at the scene the man who had kidnapped her had fled. She gave police the name of a man whom they later determined was not involved in the incident. He now has a pending civil suit against multiple law enforcement agencies that sent out alerts identifying him as the kidnapping suspect.
The bizarre incident wasn’t Jaramillo’s first. According to trial testimony and previous reports, she led police on a high-speed chase near Grants in a stolen vehicle and then claimed she’d been forced to do so by a man who was never found.
Questions about pursuit
A Santa Fe officer admitted on the witness stand he might have violated parts of the department’s pursuit policy limiting the number of officers who can participate in a chase but said he believed at the time more officers were needed to ensure Jaramillo’s safety.
The department has not yet determined whether the chase violated any policies, Deputy Chief Ben Valdez wrote in an email earlier this week, noting an internal investigation would be completed “once the criminal case has been resolved.”
Carmack-Altwies told jurors during her closing argument the pursuit was necessary.
“The officers weighed the pros and cons of the pursuit,” she said. “They weighed the life of this kidnapping victim against the danger posed by pursuing her. ... We want our police to choose to save kidnapping victims.”
She added if the chase had been called off and Jaramillo had “ended up dead with a knife in her body, the Santa Fe Police Department would have been accused of not caring about a kidnapping victim. They were damned if they did and damned if they didn’t.”
Silva countered this during his final remarks, arguing none of the dashboard or lapel camera videos from the chase reflects those sentiments.
“Try to find one video where the officers are saying, ‘There is a woman being kidnapped; we need to save her life,’ ” Silva told jurors before they began deliberating.
“None of them are talking about a hostage situation. None of them are talking about guns, knives, kidnapping,” he added.
Silva also argued the state hadn’t proven Jaramillo had a “corrupt, perverted or malicious” state of mind, a required element of the charge of depraved mind murder.
“She didn’t start the day thinking, ‘I’m going to go out with evil intent ... and two people are going to die this morning,” Silva said. “Nobody really knows what she was thinking. Nobody knows what the officers were thinking.”
But Carmack-Altwies had the last word, leaving jurors with this analogy:
“If a firefighter runs into a burning building to save an innocent person, and then that firefighter dies, do we blame that firefighter? Or do we blame the arsonist? We blame the arsonist, and Jeannine Jaramillo is the arsonist.”
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