Not All DWI Info Reported To State.(Final)
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Each year hundreds of drunken-driving cases are handled on New Mexico’s Indian reservations, but most defendants walk away with an intact driver’s license. That’s because most of those DWI arrests and convictions are not reported to the New Mexico Motor Vehicle Division, which can take away a driver’s license for 10 years if an individual is convicted of DWI three times in a 10-year span. Crownpoint resident Lloyd Larson who faces four federal counts of involuntary manslaughter for a wrong-way crash that killed four people on Jan. 25 had previously appeared before Navajo tribal court on five DWI cases. Three resulted in convictions, but none of the cases was reported to the state. The Navajo Nation is the largest Indian tribe in the country, with nearly 300,000 members. Like the other tribes in New Mexico, granted sovereign status by the federal government, it is not required to share information about traffic citations and criminal convictions. “There are no laws that require a tribe to report that stuff to the state,” Edward Martin, Navajo director of judicial administration, said last week. “By the same token, there are no laws requiring the state to report that same information to the tribes.” But the Navajo Nation has attempted to share the information. It has been trying to negotiate agreements with states that overlap its reservation so criminal conviction information could be shared, officials said New Mexico MVD… Source : accessmylibrary.com |