New Mexico Judge Charged in Bribery Case, but Former Governor Draws a Mention

Prosecutors accuse Judge Murphy of advising a judicial candidate several years ago that if she wanted to increase her chances of getting a judgeship, she should deliver cash in an envelope to a Democratic Party operative, who would pass it along to Mr. Richardson, who was in his second term as governor. Judge Murphy is quoted in court papers as saying that the practice was commonplace and that he paid $4,000 to win an appointment from Mr. Richardson in 2006.

Mr. Richardson said in a statement that suggestions that he handed out judicial appointments based on campaign contributions were “outrageous and defamatory.”

His supporters call the case politically motivated, pointing to the involvement of two prominent Republicans, including Gov. Susana Martinez, who succeeded Mr. Richardson in January. “That speaks volumes about this prosecution,” said Gilbert Gallegos, who was Mr. Richardson’s deputy chief of staff.

In 2009, Ms. Martinez, who was then a district attorney, received a complaint from one of Judge Murphy’s colleagues. Because her office appeared before the judge, she referred the matter to another prosecutor, Matt Chandler, who was the Republican candidate for state attorney general.

“This is not about one party or another,” Mr. Chandler said in a telephone interview, pointing out that five of the witnesses are Democrats and the sixth is an independent. “It’s about a judge who put a price tag on a judgeship.”

A grand jury recently indicted Judge Murphy on felony charges of bribery and witness intimidation. On Friday, Judge Murphy pleaded not guilty at his own courthouse in Las Cruces and was released after posting $10,000 bail, handing over his passport and agreeing to stay away from witnesses in the case, avoid the courthouse and turn over any firearms.

In an interview, Mr. Chandler indicated that Mr. Richardson might be questioned as part of the investigation.

“At this time, the investigation is directed at Mr. Murphy, but I can assure you that law enforcement are following leads involving other suspects,” he said. “No one is off limits to get the truth.”

Ms. Martinez released a statement earlier in the week saying the charges were serious and needed to be pursued. “The indictment of a sitting judge on charges that he paid bribes for his judicial appointment and solicited bribes from another judicial candidate is deeply troubling,” Ms. Martinez said. “No one is above the law, and this criminal defendant should not be given any special treatment.”

Judge Murphy has been suspended without pay by the State Supreme Court. A retired magistrate, Leslie Smith, was appointed to handle the case.

The matter dates to 2007 when Beverly Singleman, a former state appeals judge, contacted Judge Jim T. Martin of State District Court to discuss a vacancy on his court. She said that Judge Martin, a Richardson appointee, invited Judge Murphy along to a lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Las Cruces and that he stayed largely silent during the meal as Judge Murphy laid out how political contributions were an essential part of the process. Judge Martin has not been charged, but was removed from hearing criminal cases last week.

After the meal, Ms. Singleman, a onetime Democrat who changed her registration to independent, was concerned enough that she took the matter to Judge Lisa C. Schultz of State District Court. Judge Schultz, a Richardson appointee, later confronted Judge Murphy about the accusations, once while taping the conversation.

Judge Schultz said she was hesitant to take the matter to the Judicial Standards Commission, which investigates ethical complaints, because most of its members were appointed by Mr. Richardson.

Eventually, she took the complaint to Ms. Martinez, who was criticizing Mr. Richardson’s tenure as ethically challenged in her campaign against Diane Denish, a Democrat who was Mr. Richardson’s lieutenant governor.

New Mexico has a hybrid system of elected and appointed judges that is designed to reduce the role of politics. The governor picks judges from a list submitted by a nominating commission run by the University of New Mexico School of Law. Appointed judges then must face nonpartisan elections to keep their posts.

“I appointed judges through an extensive process, including a thorough vetting first by the judicial nominating commission and then by my legal staff of the candidates that were nominated to me,” Mr. Richardson said in his statement.

He said he personally interviewed every candidate and made his appointments based on merit. “I appointed 113 judges, including several Republicans, and the general consensus in the legal community is that we selected excellent judges who had to prove themselves to voters in elections,” he said.

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In the Golan Heights, Anxious Eyes Look East

From the vantage point of Majdal Shams, a Syrian village peeps out from behind a hillside across the valley. Damascus is 40 minutes away by car.

It was at this point a week ago that about 100 Palestinians living in Syria breached the border fence and crowded into Majdal Shams in a protest to mark the anniversary of Israel’s creation and the plight of the Palestinian refugees who demand a right to return. Four people were killed here when Israeli troops opened fire in the border area, shattering a calm of more than three decades and putting an international spotlight on this usually sleepy village near Mount Hermon.

But for the roughly 20,000 Arabs of the Druze religious sect who live in Majdal Shams and in nearby villages, this is Syrian territory — even though Israel has occupied this strategic plateau since the 1967 war and has extended Israeli law here. In the two months since the outbreak of the uprising in Syria, the Druze of the Golan have been preoccupied with, and divided by, events on the other side of the fence.

Modern communications have made contact with relatives much easier, yet have done little to make an already convoluted reality any less complicated.

Here, fierce loyalty to Syria is mixed with fear of the government led by Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, and residents have conflicted feelings about the relative freedoms they enjoy under the Israeli occupier.

“We cannot talk politics with our relatives on Skype, by phone or on the Net,” said Salman Fakherldeen , 56, a human-rights advocate at Al-Marsad, the Arab Center for Human Rights in the Golan, in Majdal Shams. “You do not need to be too clever to understand why.”

One of a few residents here who is willing to speak openly in support of the uprising in Syria, Shefa Abu Jabal, 25, has been helping disseminate news of the protests and their brutal suppression, working through social networking sites where none of the commenters uses their real names.

A graduate of Haifa University in northern Israel, where she studied law and communications, Ms. Abu Jabal said that no more than 15 people in the Golan Heights were involved in the effort. Because Israel is an open society, she said, “We have access to all Web sites.” But she added that pro-Assad “stalkers” on Twitter have accused the activists of being Israeli spies.

Residents say that the majority of the Golan Heights’ Druze are split between those who support the government of President Assad and those who do not want to get involved.

The reasons for supporting Mr. Assad include the knowledge that everything that happens in the Golan quickly finds its way to the authorities in Damascus, fear for the hundreds of thousands of Druze inside Syria and worries about what may happen to them if the current leadership is replaced by the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood.

The Druze, who practice a largely secret religion that is often described as an offshoot of Ismaili Islam, have not fared badly under the Assads, who belong to another minority sect, the Alawites. Another incentive for not opposing the regime is that up to 800 students from the Golan Heights are studying in Syrian universities free of charge. About 20 students returned home recently under a special arrangement because of the troubles in Syria.

In many cases, people’s true political positions remain as inscrutable as some of their religious beliefs.

At most, people here say, 10 percent of the Golan Druze openly identify with the protesters in Syria. In this conservative society, they risk being ostracized.

Many here say they are against the violence and bloodshed, but some, echoing the official line in Damascus, say that Islamic extremists from other countries are to blame.

In mid-April, residents held a small, silent gathering in the Majdal Shams square in solidarity with the protesters. “We did not say anything,” Ms. Abu Jabal said, “but we held signs.”

Supporters of the Assad government held a larger demonstration in Buqata, a village nearby. After a Druze soldier in the Syrian Army was killed in Homs, his relatives in Masada, another Golan village, held a memorial.

Less than 10 percent of the Golan Druze have chosen to take Israeli citizenship. Many say that their sense of belonging to Syria, even after more than 40 years of Israeli rule, is not a question of choice. They say they are Syrian, whichever side they are on.

“Politics do not concern us,” said Nayef al-Din, a shopkeeper in Masada. “We are Syrians, whoever is in charge.”

“We are in Syria now,” said Ata Farahat, 39, who works for a local television production company in Majdal Shams and is a strong supporter of Mr. Assad’s. “We have lived our whole life in Syria.”

The production company provides stories and footage from the Golan mostly for Syrian television stations, but also for some Israeli channels.

Mr. Farahat studied in Damascus from 1995 to 2002. He said he was arrested by the Israeli authorities on his return because of his political activities as a student and was jailed for a year. After working for Syrian television, he said, he spent another three years in an Israeli prison, charged with contact with enemy agents, and was released a few months ago.

His colleague, the journalist Hamad Awidat, 28, another supporter of Mr. Assad’s, studied information technology in Syria, then went to Tel Aviv University to study software engineering. Mr. Awidat has an Israeli travel document that states his place of birth as Israel and his nationality as “undefined.”

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