SOUTHERN NEW MEXICO
DOJ seeks to dismiss case against Jal police officers
Ex-cops convicted in 2025 over death of man tased 14 times
LAS CRUCES — Five years have passed since Hector Nava of San Antonio, Texas, died after police shocked him with a Taser 14 times at a gas station in the southeastern New Mexico city of Jal.
Although the official cause of death was drug overdose, two former Jal police officers, Caesar Mendoza and Eddie Embly, were convicted by a federal jury in 2025 for deliberate indifference toward Nava’s need for medical attention. Mendoza was also convicted of using excessive force, and Embly for failure to intervene.
A third officer, Corey Patrick Saffell, pleaded guilty in 2024 to depriving Nava of his constitutional rights by wrongful arrest, failing to intervene against misconduct by the other officers and showing indifference to Nava’s need for medical attention.
On July 30, 2021, Saffell arrested the 45-year-old after he declined to consent to a search of his truck, accusing him of showing a fake ID — a petty misdemeanor. Saffell admitted in a plea agreement that he had no probable cause for the arrest.
Nava was handcuffed and pushed into the divided backseat of a police vehicle with a caged K-9 police dog barking at him. Another officer, Mendoza, began using his Taser on Nava as Saffell yelled for Mendoza to continue. Saffell said he was “frustrated” with Nava and acknowledged that the use of force was not justified.
By the time the officers transported Nava to jail, he was semiconscious and had not been provided with medical assistance, as required after Taser use. Further, Saffell said that despite Nava being unable to stand and having lost control of his bladder, the officers dragged the cuffed man and left him on the floor of a holding cell face down. Officers reportedly rendered medical aid after Nava stopped breathing, but EMTs pronounced him dead.
A coroner’s report determined that Nava died of a methamphetamine overdose. Nonetheless, the city of Jal settled a wrongful death lawsuit by Nava’s estate for $5 million, as reported by the Hobbs News-Sun, and retrained police officers on Taser use.
The officers have been free on bond as they await sentencing, which was to have taken place Thursday morning.
By the time U.S. District Judge Margaret Strickland entered the courtroom — a year and a half after the jury’s verdict — the case had taken some surprising recent turns.
Prosecutors seek dismissal of their case
Mendoza moved for a mistrial after a juror came forward to allege juror misconduct. In late July, the government informed the court it would not oppose Mendoza’s motion, effectively supporting a new trial. The government argued that excluded evidence about Nava’s methamphetamine intoxication and cause of death deprived the officers of a fair trial.
Strickland denied the motion for a new trial in a minute order Wednesday, stating that a written order would follow. The government followed up with a motion, the day before sentencing, asking the judge to set the verdicts aside and dismiss the charges against Mendoza and Embly — while remaining silent about Saffell, who testified against the other officers.
A federal public defender representing Saffell did not respond to a query from the Journal.
“The Government does not believe that Defendants should be sentenced at all based on these defective convictions,” the prosecutors’ motion states. “The Government has no desire to spend time and energy defending convictions on appeal that it believes were not fairly obtained and likely will not be affirmed.”
And then another attorney filed an entry of appearance — on behalf of Nava’s family.
Nava’s family intervenes
Las Cruces attorney Israel Chávez filed a motion alleging the government had violated the Crime Victims’ Rights Act by failing to confer with Nava’s family before seeking dismissal of the convictions.
Instead, the motion states, the U.S. Attorney’s Office simply informed them of its decision to dismiss the case in a pro-forma meeting Wednesday afternoon, giving them a brief window to confer with prosecutors about the decision, declining the family’s request to delay its motion and grant them more time.
The family requested that Strickland rule that the government violated the law and defer any ruling on the motion to dismiss the case until the violation was cured by allowing the family “a genuine and meaningful opportunity to confer” with prosecutors about its action.
Thursday’s hearing was brief, as Strickland said she needed time to consider the new motions and postponed the proceedings.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Ryan Ellison was present in court but did not present any arguments. His office did not immediately respond to queries from the Journal.
Mendoza’s attorney, Russell Clark, asked Strickland to disqualify Chávez, alleging he had misused information obtained from a professional email group and alluded to an argument that unfolded over email. Strickland did not find that the dispute had any bearing on the proceedings and declined to remove Chávez.
Later on Thursday, Chávez filed a motion asking for an amicus curiae, or “friend of the court,” to be appointed since the prosecution and defense were on the same side of the proposal to dismiss the case and “unwind” a jury’s verdict.
Former prosecutor speaks
Marisa Ong was part of the prosecution team that earned the convictions against Mendoza and Embly. She has since left the U.S. Attorney’s Office and is now senior counsel for a law firm in Las Cruces. She watched Thursday’s hearing from the gallery.
“It is unprecedented for the U.S. Attorney’s Office to move to dismiss a case after securing a conviction at trial,” she told the Journal. “Convictions get appealed, sentences get appealed; but the government walking away entirely after a jury has already spoken is not something I’ve ever seen happen in the District of New Mexico.”
Ong, who worked for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for 14 years, argued the DOJ had readily conceded an appeal that would have been challenging for defendants to win, and questioned the timing of its last-minute motion to dismiss the case.
“If the government believed the convictions were fundamentally unjust, that conclusion was available to it for well over a year, not just the day before sentencing,” Ong wrote in an email.
She did not predict what might happen next but said the government’s action “reads like the office abandoning a case that involved egregious conduct by law enforcement officers, that was presented to a jury who ultimately unanimously decided those officers were guilty of using unlawful excessive force, failing to intervene, and having a deliberate indifference to Hector Nava’s serious medical needs.”
Algernon D’Ammassa is the Journal’s southern New Mexico correspondent. He can be reached at adammassa@abqjournal.com.