ALBUQUERQUE - Attorney General Hector Balderas announced July 5 that the Supreme Court of New Mexico agreed with the Office of the Attorney General’s Criminal Appeals Division and affirmed Carlos Carrillo’s convictions for the 2011 murders of Christopher Kinney and Lyndsey Frost.

The victims were found shot to death in their truck near Tiguex Park in Albuquerque. The Supreme Court affirmed the admission of testimony from an employee of Cricket showing a record of 83 cell phone calls between the defendant and Kinney in the hours before the shooting and evidence showing the location of every cell phone tower in Albuquerque.

The Court also held that testimony regarding how cell...

ALBUQUERQUE – Michael Nakai, 33, an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation who resides in Red Rock, Ariz., pled guilty today in federal court in Albuquerque, N.M., to assaulting a federal officer.

Nakai was charged by criminal complaint in Oct. 2016, with assaulting a tribal police officer of the Navajo Nation Division of Public Safety who was commissioned as a Special Law Enforcement Officer by the BIA’s Office of Justice Services.  According to the complaint, Nakai assaulted the officer by kicking the officer in the face following a traffic stop.  Nakai subsequently was indicted on Nov. 15, 2016, and was charged with assaulting a federal officer on Oct. 9, 2016, in San Juan County...

ALBUQUERQUE – Attorney General Hector Balderas joined a coalition of 19 states July 6, in suing the U.S. Department of Education and Secretary Betsy DeVos for abandoning critical federal protections for students that were set to go into effect on July 1, 2017.

The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court, alleges that the Department of Education violated federal law by abruptly rescinding its Borrower Defense Rule which was designed to hold abusive higher education institutions accountable for cheating students and taxpayers out of billions of dollars in federal loans.

The rule was finalized by the Obama administration in November 2016 after nearly two years of negotiations...