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Join this session to learn about new 2025 Behavioral Health legislation involving the New Mexico judiciary, the work of the New Mexico Supreme Court’s Commission on Mental Health and Competency, and various practical legal issues involving behavioral health.
Hon. Briana Zamora, as a dedicated public servant, has served at all levels of the judiciary. She began her judicial career when she was appointed to the Metropolitan Court bench in 2008. Four years later, she was elected to the Bernalillo County District Court. As a trial judge, she spent a decade presiding almost exclusively over adult criminal cases. She also presided over various treatment courts, including Homeless Court, the Native American Healing to Wellness Court and the Courts to School program. In 2018, she was elected to the Court of Appeals where she authored opinions in all areas of the law. Justice Zamora was then appointed to the New Mexico Supreme Court after being nominated by a bi-partisan Judicial Nominating Commission. As a Justice, she is the liaison to several commissions, including the Children’s Court Improvement Commission, the Children’s Court Judges Association, the Tribal-State Judicial Consortium and the Commission on Mental Health and Competency. She serves on the Executive Board for the American Bar Association’s Appellate Judges Conference. In 2023, she was selected as a Council of State Governments’ Henry Toll Fellow. Prior to taking the bench, Justice Zamora worked as a litigator for the State of New Mexico in several capacities. Then, she was recruited to join the law firm of Butt, Thornton & Baehr as an attorney litigating a broad range of civil cases, including workers compensation, insurance coverage and personal injury. Prior to being appointed to the bench, she founded the Zamora Law Firm where she managed the law firm and litigated criminal and civil cases. She also represented abused and neglected children as their guardian ad litem. Justice Zamora was born, raised, and educated in New Mexico and she is now raising her children in Albuquerque. She is a graduate of New Mexico State University where she received degrees in Government and Psychology. She graduated in 2000 from the University of New Mexico School of Law. She was the recipient of the Frederick M. Hart Award in Commercial Law and recognized for Honors in Clinical Law.
Esperanza Lucero is an accomplished public sector leader with over 14 years of experience in public health, aging services and emergency response. Most recently, she served as Director of the Center for Health Protection at the New Mexico Department of Health, where she led statewide epidemiology and emergency response efforts, managed a $60 million budget and oversaw a team of over 200 staff.
Previously, she served as Director of Adult Protective Services at the Aging and Long-Term Services Department, where she implemented a prevention, intervention and harm reduction model that earned her the President’s Award for Leadership Excellence and contributions to the field of APS from the National Adult Protective Services Association. Under her leadership, the APS workforce nearly doubled, turnover decreased to less than 3%, and client recidivism fell to less than 1% for all cases statewide. She also established internal behavioral health services and created the Clinical Consultant Unit, which provided intensive case management for complex cases and clinical support for APS caseworkers managing behavioral health issues.
She also served as COVID-19 Special Projects Manager, leading the state’s coordinated COVID-19 response for long-term care facilities and has held prior roles as APS Training Manager, Vaccine and Outreach Manager and State Health Improvement Coordinator. She began her career supporting criminal justice initiatives and quality improvement efforts.
She holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) and a Master of Social Work (MSW) from New Mexico Highlands University and a Bachelor of Arts in Criminal Justice from New Mexico State University.
A system of unfree labor called debt peonage proliferated in nineteenth century New Mexico, and during the 1850s it increasingly came under the scrutiny of anti-slavery politicians and activists in the United States. One important element of American abolitionism as it related to the American Southwest involved several court cases in New Mexico Territory that undermined the legality of debt peonage and placed it within the framework of American slavery more broadly. These court cases from antebellum New Mexico created the legal precedent that led to a federal ban on debt peonage after the Civil War. The New Mexico examples also provided case law that U.S. Supreme Court justices cited in the early 1900s as a basis for striking down debt peonage in the Jim Crow South. In this way, the case law involving debt peonage in nineteenth century New Mexico had sweeping national implications with respect to the abolition of unfree labor.
Dr. William S. (“Billy”) Kiser is a native of Las Cruces and completed his B.A. in history at New Mexico State University. He went on to attend Arizona State University for his M.A. and Ph.D. He is currently Professor of History and Department Chair at Texas A&M University-San Antonio, where he teaches classes on the American West, Native American History, Civil War and Reconstruction, and U.S. Foreign Policy. He is the author of six books, including Borderlands of Slavery: The Struggle over Peonage and Captivity in the American Southwest (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017) and, most recently, The Business of Killing Indians: Scalp Warfare and the Violent Conquest of North America, published in 2025 by Yale University Press.
This diverse panel of experts will discuss New Mexico’s first federal Reentry Court – the RIO (Reentry through Integrated Opportunities) Court - which was launched in September 2023. Two federal judges and representatives from the U.S. Probation Office, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Federal Public Defender’s Office, Veterans Administration and other community stakeholders, have come together for a team approach to community supervision to help some of our most vulnerable population successfully reintegrate into the community. The program participants, individuals who have either been incarcerated for a lengthy period and/or have struggled while on supervision, encounter numerous and varied barriers after they complete their sentences which can inhibit their success. The RIO Court uses a holistic approach in supervising the highest risk/need individuals reentering the community. This panel will discuss the impetus for a new approach, the diverse needs of the participants, this team’s use of cultural competence to recognize, mitigate and eliminate systemic and structural inequities and the challenges overcome so far. Attendees will have a better understanding of the federal criminal justice system; the community resources necessary to help those with past traumas, mental health and substance abuse issues; the ethical and legal considerations guiding the program and will reassess what it means to administer justice.
Hon. Laura Fashing, United States Magistrate Judge, United States District Court - District of New Mexico was sworn in as a United States Magistrate Judge for the District of New Mexico on September 1, 2015. She is the Magistrate Judge assigned to the RIO Court, the District’s first reentry court. She is Chair of the Local Criminal Rules Committee, has served on the Budget Advisory Council for the Administrative Office of the Courts and currently is the Secretary/Treasurer of the H. Vearle Payne American Inn of Court. Before becoming a judge, she was an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of New Mexico. She joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office in October 1996 and prosecuted white-collar crimes, immigration crimes and narcotics offenses. She was assigned to the appellate section full time in September 2001, and served as the Appellate Chief beginning in June 2010. Before joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office, she worked in the Civil Division of the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office. She also has worked in private practice in Albuquerque and Los Angeles. She clerked for United States District Judge Irving Hill in Los Angeles. She received her J.D. degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989 and her B.A. degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1985.
Camilla Duarte, United States Probation and Pretrial Office, District of New Mexico is a Supervisory United States Probation Officer for the District of New Mexico. She serves as the Program Coordinator for the District’s first ever Reentry/Problem-Solving Court, Reentry through Integrated Opportunities (RIO) program. She has been with the U.S. Probation Office for over 13 years and is a licensed master level social worker. Prior to becoming a U.S. Probation Officer, she worked for the State of New Mexico as a Juvenile Probation Officer. She interned at the Innocence Project in New Orleans, Louisiana and served as an ESL Teacher for the Archdiocese of New Orleans. She received her MSW degree from New Mexico Highlands University in 2011 and her BA degree from Loyola University New Orleans in 2006.
Angelica Hall, Federal Public Defender Office, District of New Mexico is an Assistant Federal Public Defender at the Albuquerque Federal Public Defender office. She’s been a criminal defense attorney for 15 years having practiced in state and federal court, as a private practitioner and as a court-appointed counsel.
This panel brings together representatives from the New Mexico Supreme Court and the Pueblo of Isleta Appellate Court to explore the structure, values and practices of both state and tribal courts. Panelists will discuss admission to tribal court practice, how to access tribal laws and the importance of practicing in tribal courts. The conversation will highlight key similarities and differences between the two systems and underscore the value of learning from one another. The panel will also address attorney representation and the importance of cross-jurisdictional understanding in promoting more effective and respectful legal advocacy.
Justice Julie J. Vargas was appointed to the New Mexico Supreme Court in December 2020 by Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, after serving for four years on the New Mexico Court of Appeals. While serving on the Court of Appeals, Justice Vargas was the co-chair of the Advisory Committee on the Code of Judicial Conduct. Before joining the Court of Appeals, Justice Vargas spent 23 years in private practice representing clients in business and real estate litigation matters. During her years in private practice, she served as co-chair of the State Bar’s Ethics Advisory Committee, and was a member of both the Disciplinary Board, and the Board of Bar Commissioners. Justice Vargas is a 1990 graduate of Brown University, receiving a degree in History and English Literature. She received her J.D. from the University of New Mexico in 1993, where she was an editor of the New Mexico Law Review. She has served on the Board of Directors for the New Mexico Museum of Natural History Foundation, volunteered for the Run for the Zoo, and rappelled down a 16-story building to raise money for Special Olympics.
Roshanna K. Toya is an enrolled member of the Pueblo of Isleta where she was born, raised and resides today. Roshanna is an alumnus of the University of New Mexico School of Law. After graduating law school, Roshanna went on to serve as a judicial law clerk for the New Mexico Court of Appeals and the U.S. District Court, District of New Mexico. Roshanna currently practices law with Rothstein Donatelli LLP where she practices in criminal defense, civil litigation and represents tribes and tribal entities. Roshanna enjoys the diversity of her practice and practices in state, federal and tribal courts throughout New Mexico and Arizona.
Roshanna has also served her Pueblo as an associate justice for the Isleta Pueblo Appellate Court since 2013. She has served as the Chief Justice of the Appellate Court since 2023. There she presides over cases related to probate, domestic relations, criminal law, employment law and any other types of disputes that are appealed from the tribal court.
Prior to pursuing a career in law, Roshanna practiced as a social worker, focused on providing direct clinical services to American Indian youth incarcerated in state prisons and assisting families of court-involved youth to secure community based behavioral health services. Roshanna holds a Master of Social Work and a Master of Criminal Justice from New Mexico State University.
Roshanna serves as a member of the Prelaw Summer Institute’s Judicial Clerkship Committee and serves as a member of the New Mexico Board of Bar Examiners. Roshanna is committed to increasing the representation of Native Americans as attorneys and as judges in both State and Federal judiciaries.
Outside of work, Roshanna can often be found cheering on her three children at their sporting events. She is married to Michael Toya, Jr., of the Pueblo of Jemez.
Justice Padilla is an Associate Professor at the UNM School of Law where she teaches courses at the intersection of Indian Law and Environmental Law and in the Clinical Law Program. Justice Nadine Padilla was appointed to the Pueblo of Isleta Appellate Court in 2023. Prior to joining the UNM School of Law faculty, Justice Padilla was appointed to serve as the Deputy Cabinet Secretary of the Indian Affairs Department for the State of New Mexico where she worked with Indian Nations throughout the state. Justice Padilla primarily practices environmental and water law and brings over a decade of experience working with Indian communities throughout New Mexico.