In addition to ongoing litigation, Coyte Law, P.C. works with legislators and organizations to fight for legislation that improves prisoner conditions and aids in reforming the criminal justice system.
Proposed House Bill 191: The Corrections Ombudsman Act
In 2021 an effort was made to pass an act that would create civilian oversight of New Mexico’s prisons. The bill, sponsored by representatives Micaela Lara Cadena, Antonio Maestas and Gail Chasey, gained bi-partisan support throughout the legislative process, but somehow failed to reach the Governor’s desk. The need for independent oversight of our prisons and jails cannot be overstated. Corruption will always flourish in closed systems such as these unless an effort is taken to oversee the expenditure of public money. Proposed House Bill 191 would have allowed an independent civilian ombudsman’s office to investigate abuses of public trust in the prison system and to provide much needed sunshine into an otherwise secretive governmental department. Matthew Coyte will continue to push this bill forward in future legislative sessions and he looks forward to the day when a Governor has the courage to sign such a bill into law.
House Bill 364
In 2019, House Bill 364 was successfully passed after years of fighting to reduce the overuse of restrictive housing and improve the inhumane conditions of solitary confinement across New Mexico jails, prisons and other detention facilities. House Bill 364 prohibits the use of restricted housing for inmates younger than 18 years of age, pregnant women, and inmates with severe mental disabilities and requires correctional facilities to produce quarterly reports on their current restricted housing populations. Matthew Coyte was instrumental in getting this bill passed and continues to lobby for legislation on behalf of New Mexican inmates.
Although the New Mexico Constitution has prohibited unreasonable bail, the historical practice throughout the court system was to use large monetary bonds as a prerequisite for pre trial release. This has historically resulted in overcrowded jails and created an environment where unconstitutional conditions of confinement could flourish. Citizens without enough money would spend long periods of time in jail waiting for their trial, whereas people with resources could buy their freedom. The mentally ill suffered the most under this system as they frequently were denied bail while waiting for competency proceedings to run their course. In 2016, this system of monetary bail was upset by the passing of a constitutional amendment. Paradoxically, this amendment expanded the number of people who could be held without bail, provided they were shown to be dangerous, yet required pre trial release of almost everyone else.
During the change in New Mexico’s bail system, Matthew Coyte was invited to sit on the Supreme Court’s committee tasked with writing the rules implementing the Constitutional Amendment. Also, as a representative of the New Mexico Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, Mr. Coyte was appointed a member of the Bernalillo County’s Criminal Justice Coordinating Council.