Dianna Duran: Former New Mexico Secretary of State Freed After 30-Day Imprisonment
Dianna Duran, the former Secretary of State of New Mexico, has been freed after serving her 30-day jail term. The 60-year-old politician was found guilty of embezzlement and money laundering after admitting she used campaign money to pay off her debts incurred while gambling.
Duran was released from Santa Fe County Jail on Jan. 17 at 8:51 a.m. Shortly after the clearance to leave was issued, she was off the jail premises within a minute, Santa Fe New Mexican News reported.
Duran was fetched and escorted by two unidentified men and they rode a truck to get home. She walked out of the prison grounds in a gray sweatsuit cover-all and carried her belongings placed in a plastic bag.
Nevertheless, after completing the jail term, the politician will continue to be monitored for five years. She left the prison with a GPS tracking device so that the Adult Probation and Parole Office can make sure that she will never go to any gambling establishments again.
It will only be after two years that Duran can request the Parole office for the monitoring device to be removed. Then again, even if the GPS tracking were taken off, her probation will go on until five years is over.
Additionally, she was ordered to pay a $14,000 in fine plus another $13,866 in restitution. The Republican must also complete 2,000 hours of community service and tasked to hold speeches in schools and civic groups, to tell them about her crimes that caused her downfall.
She was also required to write apology letters for her offenses and these must be published in six newspaper publications across the state.
The 30-day jail sentence was the result of her admittance for misusing campaign funds in order to sustain her severe gambling habit. She also tried to cover-up her misdeed but it was eventually found out.
The former Secretary of State was originally slapped with 65 charges but as part of her plea deal, she only admitted six of them. She owned up to two counts of money embezzlement and four counts of offense for taking advantage of her access to campaign funds and running off with thousands of dollars which she recklessly spent at a casino and race tracks.
She resigned from office in October 2015 and her case was brought to the court. District Judge T. Glenn Ellington could have handed her a heavier sentence of seven years behind bars but Duran accepted a plea deal.
With this incident, House Democrats now want to set up an ethics commission in order to tighten up the the law and discourage corrupt officials from carrying out their "dark" plans.
"Seeing your former secretary of state's mug shot in the paper is one way to make legislators pay attention to ethics proposals," the executive director of Common Cause New Mexico Viki Harrison said in a statement in SF Gate.
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