Oct. 11—The 2012 killing of a woman by a New Mexico prison inmate released by mistake led to a ruling this week by the state’s highest court that allows individuals to sue government agencies for similar mistakes.
The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous opinion Thursday that the family of Katherine “Kathy” Paquin can move forward with a decade-old lawsuit against the state Corrections Department in the Albuquerque woman’s killing.
The ruling will allow a lawsuit filed by Paquin’s daughter, Cheri Rodriguez, to proceed in 2nd Judicial District Court in Albuquerque, said her attorney, Adam Flores. In a broader sense, it allows governmental agencies to be sued by individuals harmed by an inmate mistakenly released from prison because of employee negligence.
“I think it’s an important victory for everybody,” Flores said. “There is really no downside in incentivizing the Department of Corrections and jails across the state to be more careful when dealing with inmate release.”
Paquin, 62, was killed in August 2012 by Christopher Blattner after he was mistakenly paroled three years early from the Guadalupe County Detention Center in Santa Rosa in February of the same year.
Blattner had not been scheduled for release until 2015 on drug trafficking and possession charges.
Blattner pleaded no contest in 2014 to voluntary manslaughter in Paquin’s abduction and killing. Her body is believed to have been dismembered and has never been located.
Blattner also pleaded guilty in April 2015 to two federal counts of possessing a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, each connected to incidents in August 2012 that involved methamphetamine. He is scheduled for release from federal prison in 2043, Flores said.
The Santa Rosa prison where Blattner was mistakenly released was managed at the time by contractor GEO Group Inc., which subsequently settled with the Paquin family.
Phone messages left Friday for attorneys representing the Corrections Department were not immediately returned.
The Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center, the state’s largest jail, had issues earlier this year with three erroneous releases of inmates in the month of July — due to clerical errors and staff oversight in two of the cases.
The three inmates were eventually returned to the jail, one almost immediately on their own and others who were re-arrested in the following weeks.
The Paquin family lawsuit, first filed in 2nd Judicial District Court in 2014, seeks undisclosed monetary damages from the New Mexico Corrections Department.
A district judge in Albuquerque tossed the case in 2017 after ruling that the New Mexico Tort Claims Act did not allow Paquin’s family to sue the Corrections Department for off-premises injuries. The Paquin family appealed the dismissal.
Justice C. Shannon Bacon, writing for the five-member court, affirmed an earlier decision by the state Court of Appeals that permits Paquin’s lawsuit to proceed under a provision called a “building waver.”
That provision lifts claims for damages caused by the negligence of public employees in public facilities. Bacon’s opinion found that the building waiver doesn’t contain a geographic limitation to an on-premise public facility.
Flores said the Supreme Court ruling provides a measure of justice for Rodriguez in the tragic death of her mother.
“She was in disbelief to learn that courts could throw these claims out,” he said. “It has been an important ruling for (Rodriguez) to know that she’s had an impact on New Mexico.”
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