One of five men charged with a Thanksgiving Day murder at a Santa Fe drug house in 2022 received a 35-year prison sentence Friday.
By the time 37-year-old Manuel “Manny” Rios-Alderete finishes serving his time, he’ll have spent nearly as much of his life in prison as out.
A Santa Fe jury convicted Rios-Alderete of first-degree murder and several related charges last month in connection with the shooting death of 26-year-old Adan Ponce-Galdeano.
Police discovered Ponce-Galdeano’s body wrapped in a blanket and tarp in a garage in Lone Butte in early December 2022, but their investigation revealed he’d been shot at the Santa Fe residence of Michael Sweeney the prior month and taken to the small community south of the city after his death.
Sweeney was “as far as the hierarchy goes, the drug dealer below [Ponce-Galdeano]” Assistant Attorney General John Duran told Judge Kathleen McGarry Ellenwood at Friday’s hearing.
Sweeney and Rios-Alderete wanted Ponce-Galdeano dead so Sweeney could avoid paying the 26-year-old a debt and Rios-Alderete could settle an old score and rob Ponce-Galdeano’s storage unit, Duran said.
The growing tension among the men came to a head on Thanksgiving Day, when Sweeney handed out guns to “a house full of junkies” who were sitting around waiting for drugs in advance of Ponce-Galdeano’s planned arrival, Duran said.
Rios-Alderete hid in another room. When Ponce-Galdeano arrived, several of the men ambushed and held him down, at which point Rios-Alderete emerged from hiding and shot him in the head “execution style,” according to the prosecutor.
Rios-Alderete then mobilized others to come clean the scene and dispose of the body, which Duran said they did poorly, leading to its discovery by police.
Had they disposed of the body more “intelligently or meticulously,” Duran said, it may not ever have been found.
Rios-Alderete was one of five men charged with murder in connection with Ponce-Galdeano’s death but the only one to stand trial.
His co-defendants — including Sweeney, Angelo Martinez, Edgar Herrera and Raul Rodriguez-Valencia — all entered into plea agreements with the state. All but Martinez testified against Rios-Alderete at trial.
Under the terms of their plea deals, all four of the other defendants — including Sweeney — will serve a total of 38 years between them, according to Rios-Alderete’s attorney, Art Nieto, who said Friday the outcome of the case doesn’t seem just.
“You give [Rios-Alderete] 35, and now you’ve completely lopsided the equation here in terms of justice,” Nieto argued.
The other men charged in the case weren’t so much a bunch of “junkies” as they were “four murderers who were able to peddle what limited value their testimony had in exchange for very low agreed-upon sentences to leave [Rios-Alderete] holding the bag,” Nieto said.
During Rios-Alderete’s trial, the state’s star witnesses downplayed their own involvement so much, Nieto added, it was hard to understand why they’d even taken guilty pleas. Others who were present that day or participated in the cover-up weren’t charged at all.
While one of the other co-defendants, Martinez, received a 16-year sentence, two of them will be required to serve three years in county jail, much of which will be included in time they spent incarcerated or on electronic monitoring awaiting trial.
Duran countered Friday that Rios-Alderete “created the bag” he was left holding by pulling the trigger and “directing traffic” on the cleanup and disposal of Ponce-Galdeano’s body.
Duran said Friday several of the other plea deals were made before the District Attorney’s Office turned the case over to the New Mexico Department of Justice, so he had no hand in them.
However, the prosecutor told the court Friday, he is considering trying to reverse the sentencing agreement in Sweeney’s case, which he did broker, saying Sweeney failed to hold up his end of the deal, twisting his testimony during Rios-Alderete’s trial in ways that could be perceived as an attempt to aid Rios-Alderete’s case.
The most glaring example of Sweeney trying to derail the proceedings was when he said for the first time while on the stand that Ponce-Galdeano may have had a firearm on him at the time of the attack, which would have opened the door for Rios-Alderete to claim he was acting in self-defense.
Sweeney walked the claim back under questioning from Duran, but the prosecutor said Friday: “I’m going to seek to increase the potential incarceration for Mr. Sweeney outside of what the original agreement was because he did not testify truthfully.”
Relatives of both Ponce-Galdeano and Rios-Alderete tearfully addressed the court Friday, some via Spanish interpreters.
Ponce-Galdeano’s sister, aunt and cousin spoke of him as a cheerful, affectionate and humble young man who liked to joke. They decried the heartless way in which he’d been murdered, leaving his 7-year-old son without a father.
They also acknowledged how Ponce-Galdeano made a living.
“My brother may not have had the most respectable job, but everything he earned, he used responsibly and with love,” sister Frida Dominguez-Galdeano said, adding her brother helped pay for her education and contributed to their mother’s medical treatment.
“While we are aware Adan was involved in a very dangerous lifestyle, we can assure you that he was a good person, and they did not have the right to do something of that magnitude to him,” his cousin said.
“Even though it’s true he didn’t have a good job, he was not a bad person,” Ponce-Galdeano’s mother, Cenaida Galdeano, said in a recorded video statement to the court.
Rios-Alderete’s wife and brother spoke on his behalf.
His wife, Liliana Ortiz, described him as “a man of great value” and “a man of principle” who was always generous and concerned about his family.
Ortiz said his incarceration has made her the single mother of three children who ask her every day when he’ll be back, a question she’s been unable to answer.
Brother Jesus Rios-Alderete said his brother fell into drug use while struggling with depression following their father’s death and family members tried to support him in recovery but his addiction was too strong.
Judge Ellenwood McGarry had the last words Friday.
“The people involved in this case were either trying to get drugs, sell drugs or get out of debt for drugs, and frankly, that includes the victim in this case who was not an innocent party, but who was right in the midst of the drug trade,” she said. “This is not to say that Adan Ponce-Galdeano deserved to die. No one deserves what happened to him.”
However, she said, as she listened to the men’s family members describe the kind of people they were, she could not help but replay the trial testimony in her mind.
“I do not find that either of these men, or frankly, any of the persons involved in this murder and this cover-up, had given much thought to anyone but themselves,” Ellenwood McGarry said. “There was not much thought given to their children or their families or how their actions would affect their respective families. This case shows exactly how devastating drugs and addiction can be to their families and to society.”