Possible drunken driving charges against Montezuma County District Attorney Christian Hatfield have stalled while the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office awaits the results of a blood sample secured the night of his Aug. 30 crash outside Farmington on U.S. Highway 64.
And in Montezuma County, Sheriff Steven Nowlin said a new investigation began last week after Hatfield took part in a thread of texts that contained insulting, inaccurate and sexist comments against a reporter for The Journal.
In Farmington, the delays in the case were attributed in part to a staff shortage.
“The Sheriff’s Office is still awaiting blood results from the state lab for possible criminal charging,” Sheriff Shane Ferrari told the Tri-City Record in an email Wednesday. “I do not have a timeline when we will be receiving those back.”
An Inspection of Public Records request by the Tri-City Record on Oct. 13 asked for correspondence including emails, text messages and letters between the Sheriff’s Office and the San Juan County District Attorney's Office that concerned Hatfield and the crash.
According to emails obtained by the Tri-City Record, officials discovered that the blood sample had been “sitting in the fridge” since Aug. 30 because the request to process it did not make it through the Law Enforcement Records Management System.
The blood work was “checked in and ready to be mailed,” as of 8:39 a.m. Oct. 4, according to an email sent by Sheriff’s Office evidence custodian Elijah Montoya.
The Journal and Tri-City Record also requested on Sept. 3 and again on Oct. 13 copies of dash camera and lapel camera videos from the crash. The requests have not yet been fulfilled.
Ferrari attributed the delay to staffing shortages in his office, which has just one full-time employee who works to fulfill records requests.
“We are normally staffed with four full-time and have now increased to five to keep up with demand,” he said.
“Like other law enforcement agencies, this comes at a difficult time as we have seen a continued increase in records requests, specifically with video, which is labor intensive,” Ferrari said. “Our staffing situation is improving.”
On Oct. 23, The Journal newspaper in Cortez and the Tri-City Record in Farmington also requested copies of the blood warrant, search warrant and arrest warrant for Hatfield.
“After reviewing your request, it has been determined that those documents are currently pending. I will continue to research and provide the response as soon as they are available,” said Jennifer Coponiti, records clerk at the Sheriff’s Office.
This week, amid the uncertainty of the delayed documents, Hatfield launched an attack surrounding the news coverage.
After a freelance reporter at The Journal texted Hatfield for comment about the status of this case, he stated in a text message on Oct. 17 that he would not answer the reporter directly.
“The last article about me was so poorly written and inaccurate that we should stick to press releases,” Hatfield said in a text to the reporter.
On Oct. 22, texts from Hatfield became more aggressive, and a third party, identified only by a phone number, joined in. The 2024 voters registration list connected that number, along with an address, to retired Durango defense lawyer Thomas Williamson, and in an emailed response to the Tri-City Record, he identified himself as the third party.
The reporter from The Journal was included in Hatfield’s text thread.
Hatfield began by attacking the reporter’s values.
“I did not know until I asked around that you were an ultra-right-wing christian nationalist … who had gone to Jerry Falwell ‘college.’ I should have been less naive in assuming journalistic integrity. I have since read your badly written, intellectually muddled Federalist op-ed opinions. Ballantine (Ballantine Communications Inc.) used to have standards. My parents wrote for the Boston Globe.”
“What’d she gets (sic) wrong?” the Williamson asked. “Didn’t she just read cop report?”
“She said there were drugs and alcohol in my car,” Hatfield wrote to the third party. “The report said no alcohol, no drugs, aside from a full bottle of Ambien I filled the day before.”
Williamson then added a sexual slur in his response:
“She’s just being creative. You’re obviously not Godly and that might explain it … Demand (c**t) retract.”
Hatfield ended the thread by stating, “I personally pulled every item from my car at the salvage yard.”
According to the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office, a search warrant was still pending, but Ferrari confirmed that Hatfield could have removed items from his vehicle because the Sheriff’s Office did not seize the car for “evidence.”
“So it is quite possible he went there, pulled out all of his belongings,” Ferrari said.
And New Mexico State Police Officer Joseph Cloyd’s report stated that evidence of alcohol and a prescribed sedative were found at the crash scene.
“I observed an open container of an alcoholic beverage located on the front passenger floorboard labeled Mexican Lager. The container was crushed from the sides but still had residual liquid,” he wrote in the police report.
Cloyd also stated there was a “a pill bottle with several pills inside next to this open container labeled Ambien,” which had Hatfield’s name on it.
Cloyd stated in the report that “evidence of intoxication of alcohol and or drugs was present on Driver 1 (Hatfield), and in the vehicle Driver 1 failed to maintain the traffic lanes resulting in a crash.”
The Tri-City Record called and left phone messages for Hatfield and Williamson on Thursday.
Williamson responded by email on Friday after this article was published online, saying he was unaware Hatfield had included the reporter in the thread.
“I thought I was just talking to Mr. Hatfield and the minute I was notified that the reporter he was complaining about was actually on the thread, I apologized for my comments and explained I thought I was only talking to Mr. Hatfield,” Williamson wrote.
That text read, “I aplkigize (sic) for my language. I thought I was just talking to Hatfield.”
Williams characterized his use of the sexist slur as just talk between friends and not directed at the reporter.
“While I regret my language, it’s a big difference to use such language in conversation with a friend as opposed to using a slur, which incidentally I also do concerning men, to the person being discussed,” he wrote in his email.
Williamson stated that leaving out the information about his lack of knowledge of the reporter’s presence, “it looks like possible criminal conduct by me.”
“I apologized for my comments and explained I thought I was only talking to Mr. Hatfield,” Williamson wrote. “It can be criminal conduct if it were some intentional harassment not a mistake but your article does not explain that I was unaware that she was actually on a text message to me from Mr. Hatfield. Why he texted her and why he did not tell me he was doing this when he texted me, I do not know.”
Hatfield, a former defense attorney who has worked in Farmington and Durango, was appointed district attorney by Gov. Jared Polis in 2023. Running as a Democrat, he now faces a challenge by Republican Jeremy Reed, a former deputy district attorney under Hatfield in the Nov. 5 election.
This article was updated Oct. 25 to report that Thomas Williamson is a retired lawyer and to include a text in the thread in which he apologized for his language.
This article was updated Oct. 26 to include statements from a email sent to the Tri-City Record by Thomas Williamson.
