Coleman gets 4 1/2 years
Local Indian trader who shot into deputy’s home gets ‘gift’ from judge

Surrounded by family and friends, Elizabeth Coleman holds hands with her daughter Savanah as they make their way out of the McKinley County Courthouse after the sentencing of their father and husband Steve Coleman on Friday afternoon. Coleman was sentenced to 4 years in prison but may serve less time because of the time he has already spent in jail. [Photo by Matt Hinshaw/Independent]

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — Local Indian trader Steve Coleman will be spending the next 2 1/2 years in state prison, after receiving a 4 1/2 year sentence from District Court Judge Robert Aragon Friday.

That’s more than Coleman and his family wanted, but Aragon referred to is as a “gift.”

Aragon’s ruling stipulates that Coleman will be released on parole six months early if he is able to get a bed at a center at Fort Stanton, where he would get treatment for his almost 40 years of alcohol abuse and for his mental problems, including his bipolar disorder.

If no bed is available, he will serve his entire 41ž2 years.

He also will get credit for the 186 days he has already served in county jail, but not for the 241 days he was under house arrest. Since he will have to serve at least 80 percent of that four-year sentence, the earliest he could get out of state prison will be in early 2010. After that he will be on probation for the next five years.

Coleman is also going to have to pay restitution to James Mariano, the deputy whose house he shot up in retaliation for getting a DWI citation. Mariano told the court that he has received estimates that repairs his trailer, which still has the 39 bullet holes in it, some of which are in his children’s bedrooms, will cost $21,677 to fix. Coleman will also have to pay restitution to the owner of the building where Connections has its counseling offices because of the damage he caused when he tried to set fire to one of the offices.

Aragon plans to take this out of the $100,000 that Coleman posted to make bail when he was put on house arrest. He also plans to take out of this the $16,000 that Coleman’s newest attorney, Robert Cooper, has charged him for defending him during the sentencing hearing. There was one report that all of this could use up most, if not all of the $100,000, but Aragon said he would not know this until everyone submits receipts.

The “gift” reference from Aragon came as he explained that he was allowing Coleman to get out of jail six months early so he could get the treatment he needed. That shows, he said, that the community has not given up on him.

Aragon also pointed out the crimes Coleman had been indicted for could have carried a sentence of more than 12 years, and he had signed off on a plea agreement between Coleman and the district attorney’s office that limited him to a maximum of a 41ž2 year sentence.

But Cooper pushed hard to get Aragon to give Coleman a sentence that would allow him to be out of prison by the end of this year.

To accomplish this, he had Dr. Moss Aubrey, a psychologist from Albuquerque who had evaluated him last week, testify the Gallup community would be better served if Coleman received no more prison time and allow him to get the treatment he needed to address his decades of alcohol abuse.

As a former police officer, Coleman would spend his state prison sentence in isolation, which would not allow him to get any of the needed treatment he needed. As a result, if he received a long sentence, he would come out of prison in worse shape than he is now, and he will continue to be a danger to the community.

But Aragon accepted part of this argument — which is why he took off six months to allow Coleman to get treatment — but he also felt that there was a need for the “community to have confidence in law enforcement.”

Mariano, after the hearing, said he is prepared to go on with his life once he gets the money to repair his trailer .
He and his family are reminded daily of the shooting, he said, since the holes in the trailer are still there.

None of his family were in the trailer at the time of the shooting, but his brother had left just before the shooting and his wife had come back when the dust stirred up by the bullets had not settled.

The family was not able to come back to the trailer for several days because it was a crime scene, and he dressed his children, who are 4 and 6, in bulletproof vests when they went to bed in case the person who shot into the trailer came back.

In the end, District Attorney Karl Gillson felt that justice has been served and law enforcement was able to accomplish something that it had been trying to do for several years.

And as for the risk the Gallup area will have once he gets out, he points out that he will be under supervision during his probation and if violates it, he will be going back to prison.

And as he was leaving the courthouse, he had one more admission: “I wouldn’t be unhappy if he asked to have another state supervise his probation.”