Governor Appoints Chief Deputy Bernitz to Lead McKinley County Prosecutions

When state investigators got inside the McKinley County district attorney's Gallup office after Bernadine Martin's February resignation, they found six previously undisclosed murder cases and more than 100 criminal complaints that had never been filed in court. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham appointed John Bernitz as the new Eleventh Judicial District Attorney on April 2 to confront exactly that accounting.

Bernitz, who was sworn in Thursday in Gallup, had held the office's chief deputy post since October 2025 and will now serve as DA through the November 2026 general election. San Juan County DA Jack Fortner, who recommended Bernitz to the governor and had been managing McKinley County's prosecutorial budget since the Legislature stripped it from Martin last year, described what he expects: "Not only is he going to keep things going, we think he has the ability to hire several more staff attorneys."

That staffing gap defines the immediate challenge. Martin's office is authorized for eight assistant prosecutors and operated with zero for more than six months before her resignation. Attorney General Raúl Torrez said his office had already absorbed 30 to 40 major felony cases to keep prosecutions moving. Retired judge George Harrison, serving as a special prosecutor on county felonies, was reworking four murder cases attributed to Martin's mismanagement when the appointment came through. Martin had reported personally carrying 551 criminal cases as of mid-February, a load that contributed directly to years of dismissals, including vehicular homicides that never reached a courtroom and those six murder files with no documented explanation for why they were never charged.

Bernitz came to the chief deputy role with deep local roots. Admitted to the New Mexico bar in 2007, he spent seven years as a public defender in Gallup from 2012 to 2019 and ran the Law Office of John Bernitz there from 2021 to 2023, handling criminal and family law matters. "He's very experienced, a good lawyer and I'm very pleased with the governor's appointment of him," Fortner said.

Budget control is expected to return to McKinley County in July when the new state fiscal year begins. How quickly Bernitz can staff up and move the inherited backlog through the Eleventh Judicial District's courtrooms will define the appointment before voters choose a permanent district attorney in November.