Cleo Juan wants new trial
Foster parent convicted in child’s death is related to DA Karl Gillson

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — The attorney for Cleo Juan is asking for a new trial because his client is related to McKinley County District Attorney Karl Gillson.

Mark Fine, Juan’s attorney, said that the relationship resulted in his client receiving an unfair trial.

Juan was convicted in January of being responsible for the death of 18-month-old Colby Shirley, who was placed into her care by the state of New Mexico’s foster parent program. She was scheduled to be sentenced today but this has been continued.

Under a new law approved in 2006, she faces what basically is a life sentence. The law dealing with intentional abuse of a child under the age of 12 resulting in death requires her to serve at least 30 years before she can be considered for parole.

Fine said he was unaware of the relationship between his client and the district attorney until after she was convicted.

“Ms. Juan’s grandfather, Lloyd Baldwin, who passed away in November of 1997, was Mr. Gillson’s great uncle,” the motion states. This would make Gillson and Juan second cousins, the motion said. He would also be second cousin to David Smith and Paulette Lee, both of whom testified in her defense during the trial.

Normally, any hint of a relationship between a district attorney and someone accused of a major felony is viewed as being an advantage to the defense because the district attorney would step in to help a family member. But in this case, the defense is arguing that the relationship hurt Juan and was the reason the prosecution refused to consider allowing the jury the option of finding her guilty of the lesser offense of child abuse — which carries a far shorter sentence.

“The U.S. Supreme Court’s requirement that a prosecutor be ‘disinterested’ precludes all types of interests, including those that would seem, at first blush, be favorable to the accused,” the motion read. “The reason for this is simple: when a prosecutor has an interest, other than justice, in one of the cases, it is impossible to determine what role that interest played in the case.”

It’s possible, Fine said in his motion, that there may have been some historical evidence of friction between Gillson and Juan’s side of the family. But Fine presented no evidence that that was true and said that this would have to be investigated.

He said it’s also possible that Gillson’s decision to prosecute Juan to the fullest extent of the law occurred because he wanted to show he was tough during his re-election campaign. However, during that campaign, the question of Juan’s relationship to Gillson never came up once.

What Fine wants is another trial with Gillson having an outside prosecutor handle it.

That’s what happened in part in this trial since the main prosecutor, Jim Bierly, was hired under contract to work with Bernadine Martin of the DA’s staff to prosecute the case. Bierly, however, was hired because the original prosecutor, Pat Kramer, died before the trial started and Gillson, who was scheduled to take over, had to be in Santa Fe during the trial to talk to legislative officials on budgetary matters.

Gillson said Thursday that he was unaware of an alleged relationship between Juan and him until Fine brought it up, adding that he still does not know if the relationship is as Fine describes it.

He said he knew Baldwin, who lived less than a mile from his home in Lupton when he was growing up, was related in some way to his mother but he did not, as is common in Navajo society, have a relation with him where he would help out in hauling wood or doing other chores that a young Navajo would do to show respect to an elderly relative.

“I don’t remember ever taking one step into his house,” Gillson said. He added that he did not have any kind of relationship as a child with younger members of Baldwin’s family.

His office has had a firm policy, he said, of farming out any cases where either he or any other member of his staff is related to the accused. This has happened numerous times, including when his half-sister, Geraldine Draper, came up on theft charges and when one of is staff members had a son who was charged with DWI.

Fine’s decision to use this in an attempt to get a new trial is “just an act of desperation,” Gillson said.

In his motion, Fine continues to argue that it was Jeff Juan, Cleo Juan’s husband, who caused the injury to Colby that resulted in his death, pointing out that Jeff Juan had a prior domestic violence arrest, lied to police saying he wasn’t home at the time and then refused to talk to police after that.

Jeff Juan was never called as a witness by either side at the trial.