New Mexico Supreme Court upholds Sandoval County murder conviction in teacher killing

The New Mexico Supreme Court left David Salazar’s first-degree murder conviction intact, closing the last major legal chapter in a case that shook the small Sandoval County community of Ponderosa and the Jemez Valley schools where Joseph Keleher taught social studies.

Joseph Keleher, 59, was found dead in his cabin from shotgun wounds after Sandoval County sheriff’s deputies responded to a 911 call about a broken window and a dead man inside a rental home in Ponderosa. The killing, which happened in 2023, set off a criminal case that ended with a jury convicting Salazar of first-degree murder and a judge sentencing him to life in prison, plus three more years for evidence tampering.

On May 7, 2026, the high court unanimously affirmed that conviction in State v. Salazar, No. S-1-SC-40696, in an opinion written by Justice David K. Thomson. The court said the trial judge correctly refused to give jurors the instructions Salazar wanted on mistake of fact and on whether grief over the recent deaths of his wife and oldest son kept him from forming the deliberate intent required for first-degree murder.

Salazar told law enforcement he shot Keleher because he believed Keleher had sexually abused his son. The son denied that allegation, and investigators found no history of sexual abuse by Keleher. The justices said New Mexico law does not recognize alleged molestation of a family member as a defense to first-degree murder, and they found the jury already had a voluntary-manslaughter instruction that allowed it to consider whether provocation reduced the offense.

For Sandoval County schools, the ruling does not create a new safety policy or change how Jemez Valley High School operates. It does, however, leave Keleher’s death fixed in the record as a murder conviction, not a legal dispute still headed back through the courts. That matters in a place like Ponderosa, where the victim and defendant both lived and where the teacher’s death reached beyond one home to a tight-knit school community.

For Keleher’s family, colleagues and neighbors, the decision brings finality to the appellate process, but not to the loss itself. The conviction and sentence remain in place, and the court’s ruling closes the possibility that Salazar’s intent arguments will undo the verdict that a jury already reached.