A couple of months after her trip to the state facility in Las Vegas, NM the facility issued a report asserting Patricia’s legal competence.

            The defense can agree or not agree. If they do not agree, they hold the original finding of incompetency to be valid. This reasoning could impact Patricia’s marriage to Ray Lopez Jr. New Mexico law requires the parties entering into a marriage to be legally competent and a member of Patricia’s family or the DA could go into Court in the attempt to have her marriage annulled on this basis.

            Not that I believe anyone would bother. The issue just illustrates the complexity and the ludicrous aspects this mess. Look, you marry a guy by telephone while in jail and the first night you get to spend together is when he is arrested for the eighth time for DWI and joins you in the county lockup. The technicalities concerning competency seem a little ironic.

            And speaking of which, the DA dismissed what could have been Lopez’s fifth DWI conviction in favor of plea bargain on probation violation of some of his various felony convictions. The sentence was about the same and Mr. Lopez should be free in four or five months, with good time.

            With the determination of competency, the DA intends to ask for Patricia to finish out her original sentence, with good time, about a year.

            I imagine the defense will argue that Patricia deserves good time credit for the approximately two years she has spent in the county lockup awaiting resolution of this probation violation. If this carries, she should be released in a few months.

            In either case, she will be off probation, freed from those restraints.

            And we will enter a new phase of the story.