The New Mexico Supreme Court kicked back a highly-criticized ruling for a former teacher convicted of sexually assaulting a student in 2017.
Patrick Howard, a 61-year-old former agricultural sciences teacher and Future Farmers of America advisor at Las Cruces High School, is due in court on Aug. 1 after the state’s high court found that a Las Cruces judge should reconsider Howard’s suspended probation. Justices took up the case after the New Mexico Attorney General filed a petition requesting the court to reconsider the suspended probation and remove the case from the 3rd Judicial District Court.
The Supreme Court did force the judge, Douglas Driggers, to reconsider his previous probation suspension but did not take the case from him, as the AG requested.
Howard was charged with three counts of criminal sexual contact with a minor and one count of battery. He pleaded guilty in 2021 to one count of criminal sexual contact with a minor and a count of battery.
Driggers sentenced him to five years of probation but did not require him to formally register as a sex offender – a deal that the 3rd Judicial District Attorney’s Office approved at the time but has since backtracked on.
In March 2024, Driggers suspended the sentence early. It's unclear from court records what prompted the suspension other than Driggers' belief that Howard had "satisfactorily fulfilled the conditions of his probation."
That series of events prompted AG Raúl Torrez to bring the case to the Supreme Court’s attention. Torrez also lambasted Driggers during a news conference in Las Cruces on May 10.
“The New Mexico Department of Justice has taken this action not only because we believe the judge acted improperly and in violation of the law, but more importantly, because of the way that the process unfolded,” Torrez said. “It does not appear to us that the District Court complied with the constitutional protections that are set forth and guaranteed under law.”
