Man Pleads No Contest To Threatening Anglers on Pecos River
By Ben Neary/NMWF
A Santa Fe County man has pleaded no contest to felony charges that he used guns to threaten anglers on the Pecos River.
District Judge Michael Aragon of Las Vegas on Tuesday accepted the plea agreement that Erik Briones entered with the New Mexico Department of Justice.
Briones pleaded no-contest to three counts of aggravated assault involving threatening or menacing conduct with a deadly weapon. In exchange, the state dropped two other counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon as well as a public nuisance charge.
A no-contest plea means that a defendant does not contest a charge, but it is not an admission of guilt. Attempts to reach a lawyer representing Briones were not immediately successful.
The agreement specifies Briones will face a sentence of five years of probation. The agreement specifies he could be released from probation after serving two years, six months if he complies with all conditions.
Judge Aragon has set sentencing for Aug. 19. Briones may ask Aragon to impose a sentence of conditional discharge, meaning that Briones would not have convictions on his record if he completes probation satisfactorily. The state has not agreed to a conditional discharge, so that issue will be left to the judge to decide.
The terms of probation for Briones include that he not impede the public from fishing or recreating in the Pecos River where it crosses property he owns, upstream from the Village of Pecos in San Miguel County. It specifies he can’t threaten people, or erect any signs or barriers that would block the public from touching the streambed or banks as reasonably necessary to enjoy the public’s right to access the water to fish and recreate.
The New Mexico Department of Justice announced on June 1 that it had filed charges against Briones. The charges accused Briones of repeatedly threatening anglers between April 2023 and March 2026. Witness statements allege Briones brandished firearms and threatened that he was going to begin “target practicing,” causing the anglers in the river to believe they were about to be shot.
At a court hearing in May, Santa Fe resident Kennis Romero, a flyfishing guide, testified that Briones had threatened him as he was fishing on the Pecos River.
“On three separate occasions in the summer of 2023, Mr. Briones threatened me with a shotgun,” Romero testified. He stated he and a friend left the river as a result of a threat.
Romero is one of four anglers who provided statements to investigators saying Briones had confronted them on the river. The anglers picked Briones’s photo out of a photo array as the person who had threatened them, according to investigators.
Attorney General Raúl Torrez issued a statement in June after his office filed the charges against Briones.
“These allegations involve dangerous and unlawful intimidation directed at New Mexicans who were exercising their legal right to access and recreate in public waters,” Torrez said. “No one has the right to threaten violence against members of the public because they disagree with established law. Our office will continue enforcing both the criminal laws of this state and the public access protections guaranteed under New Mexico law.”
At the May court hearing, Briones said he believed the AG’s Office was harassing him for owning property. He said some anglers cross his land to reach a private pond, play loud music on boom boxes early in the morning and allow their dogs to run loose on this property,
Briones said he didn’t know Romero. “If I had to bring out a shotgun, he was provoking me and threatening me,” Briones said.
Under questioning from Mark Baker, a lawyer for the state, Briones testified in May that he didn’t recall threatening anyone with a shotgun. He responded “absolutely,” when Baker asked him if he suffers from memory problems.
The New Mexico Supreme Court in 2022 reaffirmed the longstanding right of New Mexicans to walk or wade on the streambeds of water that flows over privately owned lands for fishing or other recreation. The court also made it clear that the public has no right to trespass over private lands to reach the water.
“We hold that the public has the right to recreate and fish in public waters and that this right includes the privilege to do such acts as are reasonably necessary to effect the enjoyment of such right,” the New Mexico Supreme Court stated in its unanimous opinion.
The New Mexico Supreme Court ruling came in response to a legal challenge brought by the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, the Adobe Whitewater Club and the New Mexico Chapter of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers. The groups had challenged a regulation adopted by the New Mexico State Game Commission that went into effect in 2017 that purported to allow landowners to close streams over their properties.
The United States Supreme Court in early 2023 declined a request from some New Mexico landowners who have fenced off public waters to reconsider the state court ruling.
Following the state supreme court ruling, Torrez’s office undertook a civil lawsuit against Briones and other landowners on the Pecos seeking to force them to remove barriers to public use of the river. A state district judge in May found Briones in contempt of an order in that case that he not block public use of the river.
Briones and other landowners launched another federal court challenge in 2024 arguing that the state supreme court ruling amounted to an unconstitutional government taking of their property. A federal judge in New Mexico ruled against Briones and the others in that case.
Early this year, a three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the landowners’ appeal of the most recent federal court ruling from New Mexico. Briones and the others have asked for a review of the 10th Circuit ruling by a larger panel of judges at the court. Lawyers for the state in June filed papers urging the court to deny the request for review.
