By Noble Brigham
Las Vegas Review-Journal
LAS VEGAS — Police rearrested a man Wednesday whom they previously refused to release onto electronic monitoring despite a judge’s order to do so.
Joshua Sanchez-Lopez, 36, was taken back into custody the day before a hearing in his prior grand larceny of a motor vehicle case. A motion is moving forward in the earlier case that could result in the Metropolitan Police Department being held in contempt of court.
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He is now accused of stealing mail and having an apparent fraud lab in his home.
His is one of multiple recent cases in which Metro has refused to follow judicial orders releasing defendants onto electronic monitoring, a program run by police that supervises pretrial defendants.
Metro says it has authority under state law to decide whether putting someone on electronic monitoring poses an unreasonable risk to public safety. Police have said Sanchez-Lopez has previously been arrested 35 times, has fled from law enforcement, once pointed a gun at an officer and was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in Nye County.
Public defenders have argued that police are “unlawfully exercising a judicial function” by essentially overruling judges to determine a defendant’s custody status.
“What they’re doing now violates people’s rights,” public defender David Westbrook said last week. “They are exercising authority they don’t have to keep people imprisoned without due process, against a judicial order.”
The dispute is before the Nevada Supreme Court and has become high-profile in recent days, with conservative commenters and political figures expressing support for McMahill on social media. Nevada’s top federal prosecutor Sigal Chattah and Gov. Joe Lombardo have both aligned themselves with Metro. National news outlets have covered the clash.
Police said in a news release that Metro received a call Wednesday reporting a man going through mailboxes at an apartment complex in the 4400 block of Karen Avenue.
Officers located Sanchez-Lopez in a parking lot on Boulder Highway and learned he had taken mail, according to police.
“Detectives also found what appeared to be a fraud lab and narcotics within his residence,” said Metro.
He was booked in jail on a slew of charges, including child abuse or neglect, possessing documents or personal identification to commit forgery, obtaining a credit card without the cardholder’s consent and possession of a controlled substance under 14 grams.
Westbrook did not immediately comment on Sanchez-Lopez’s new arrest.
Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Eric Goodman set bail at $25,000 in Sanchez-Lopez’s stolen vehicle case on Jan. 13 and also ordered that he be placed on high-level electronic monitoring, a level of supervision that only allows a person to leave their home for things like school and work.
Instead of releasing the defendant onto the monitoring program, Metro sent the judge a letter informing him that Sanchez-Lopez posed “an unreasonable risk to public safety.”
Goodman again ordered the department to release Sanchez-Lopez onto high-level monitoring and when police did not, expressed frustration at hearing in February.
“Call me crazy, but I’m the judge,” said Goodman, according to a transcript. “I would like to think that my orders are actual orders.”
He ultimately released Sanchez-Lopez onto pretrial compliance unit monitoring operated by the Las Vegas Justice Court and designed for defendants accused of low-level offenses.
Metro attorney Michael Dickerson said last week the department’s position is not that they are refusing to release someone, simply that they do not want a defendant on their program.
“If the sheriff has determined that electronic supervision of a particular individual poses an unreasonable risk to public safety, the court does not have the power to tell the sheriff: ‘Violate the law,’” he said.
At least one other judge, District Judge Erika Mendoza, appears to view the situation differently from Goodman and has said in court that the law allowed Metro “to have their own standards and review for who they can accept on monitoring.”
Contact Noble Brigham at nbrigham@reviewjournal.com.
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