Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
QCS Managing Editor
A Tucumcari woman may be facing 19 to 25 years in prison after being convicted Wednesday of a drug trafficking felony and other drug-related charges by a jury in Tenth Judicial District Court, Tucumcari, according to Tim Rose, Tenth Judicial district attorney.
The jury found the woman, Donna Romero, guilty of distributing methamphetamine, which on repeat convictions carries a mandatory 18-year sentence, Rose said, as well as charges related to possession of both meth and drug paraphernalia, a meth pipe. The verdict came Wednesday after two full days of testimony in the case before Judge Albert Mitchell.
Mitchell has not yet set a sentencing date.
State police Sgt. Roberto Chavarria testified Tuesday that he and Officer Isaac Vigil pulled Romero’s car over on Interstate 40 after it was seen swerving in the early morning of Feb. 14. As Romero talked to the officers, they noticed that she was trying to conceal a pipe. Chavarria said. Police confiscated the glass pipe and later identified methamphetamine residue in its bowl.
Romero was then taken to the Quay County Detention Center. Three days later, on Feb. 17, there was a “shakedown” in the jail, based on a report that an inmate possessed illegal drugs. During that shakedown, Romero was found to be carrying more than two grams of methamphetamine when jail officers conducted a cavity search, according to corrections officers’ testimony.
Quay County Sheriff’s deputy Frankie Gutierrez testified Tuesday that amount of meth could sell for $200 on the street. A tenth of a gram sells for about $10 on the street, he said, and is the usual amount that users will ingest in a single smoking session.
The jury on Wednesday convicted Romero of distributing methamphetamine, based on testimony she had given another inmate some methamphetamine in her jail cell, but dismissed a charge of possession of methamphetamine with intent to sell.
Rose said the two grams of methamphetamine found in Romero’s possession was too small to warrant an assumption that she intended to sell the drug.
The jury also convicted Romero on felony charges of tampering with evidence in attempting to hide the methamphetamine she was carrying, based on the jail shakedown search, and possession of methamphetamine. The jury also returned a guilty verdict on a misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia charge based on the pipe police confiscated in the traffic stop, Rose said.
Since Romero is a repeat offender with convictions in 1998 and 2006 for trafficking cocaine and methamphetamine and for forgery, Rose has filed a “supplemental criminal information” document in court requesting that Mitchell enhance Romero’s sentence under state habitual offender statutes.
If the judge grants that request, he said, the sentence could be 19 to 25 years in prison.
Rose said the conviction eliminates a “major contributor to the meth problem in the community” and may assist police in further enforcement activity related to meth.
Methamphetamine, Rose said, “is a cancer we have in our community. It destroys lives and families,” and added that Romero’s sentence is a signal to meth traffickers that “they’re going to to hard time” when caught, which he hopes will be a deterrent to drug trafficking in Quay County.
Romero’s defense attorney Tomas Benevidez, a contract public defender based in Las Vegas, said, “Juries do what they do. They heard both sides, deliberated, and made their decision.”
“We were partially successful,” he said, in getting the possession with intent to distribute charge dismissed. He said the the sentence on that charge could have been as long as nine years in prison.
