ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – Yarelis Cespedes, a woman accused of recording a 13-year-old being sexually assaulted and posting it online, will remind bars until her next hearing after the state filed for her conditions of release to be revoked for repeatedly violating her orders. The District Attorney’s office accused pretrial services of not doing their job to monitor her.
Cespedes is set to go to trial on November 27 after being accused of recording a 13-year-old being sexually abused and posting it online back in 2019.
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She has repeatedly gotten into trouble since which has violated her conditions of release and the state wants pretrial services to explain why they are not keeping track of her. The motion lays out numerous violations after Judge Brett Loveless denied the state’s motion to keep her behind bars in 2019. “She has nothing, not even a traffic ticket on her record, so there’s nothing for the court to base at least at this point that she does present a danger going forward,” said Judge Loveless in 2019.
Cespedes was released with orders to attend all court dates, not commit any additional crimes, no drugs or alcohol, and no unsupervised contact with children. “Her supervision was reduced a little bit right before her case was dismissed in March of 2020 due to complying with conditions of release,” said Judge Cindy Leos.
When charges were refiled in August 2020, she was given the same conditions of release but wasn’t placed back on pretrial services. Then in November 2022, her defense attorney told the judge that he couldn’t reach her. Cespedes was then ordered to wear a GPS monitor under pretrial services supervision. A mistrial was declared in February but the DA’s Office was going to retry Cespedes.
A month later, pretrial services reduced Cespedes’ level of supervision again claiming that she reported for all appointments. Her lawyers then got the judge to remove the ankle monitor. Once the GPS monitoring was off, she was cited for careless driving and allegedly involved in a domestic violence incident. In August, the state asked for her conditions of release to be reconsidered but Cespedes didn’t show up to court. The judge ordered her back on GPS monitoring in September once one was available.
On October 19, Cespedes tested positive for fentanyl. The DA’s Office said pretrial services didn’t report to them. Then on November 3, she was arrested on two felony shoplifting charges. Cespedes finally had her conditions of release temporarily revoked Thursday morning pending a hearing scheduled for next week.
The state is asking the court to order pretrial services to tell them why they didn’t report the drug infraction to the court and whether they notified the New Mexico Children, Youth, and Families Department about the positive drug test since Cespedes has a young child.
