This site is being updated and the course is no longer active. Please refer to the main JEC site for up-to-date information on Domestic Violence in New Mexico.

Course Overview

About This Program
Resources
Certificate of Course Completion
CLE/CJE Credit
Confidentiality
Technical Specifications (takes you to the Help page)

About This Program
The Judicial Education Center’s Domestic Violence Virtual Trial is designed to introduce judges and court staff to issues and challenges that typically arise in civil and criminal domestic violence cases. Reluctant or recanting witnesses, attempts to introduce scientific evidence, requests to enforce protection orders from other jurisdictions, and conditions to impose during release pending trial or in sentencing are a few of the many challenges that arise in such proceedings.

The virtual trial presents video scenarios of attorneys and pro se parties engaged in proceedings that pose these and other problems typically found in domestic violence cases. Each scene is viewed from the perspective of the judge’s bench, and the judge’s own remarks appear as printed text. After some testimony or argument, the judge is called upon to rule, perhaps to sustain or overrule an objection, to grant or deny a motion, to adopt or reject conditions for orders of protection or release pending trial, or to impose a sentence. At that point, each participant is asked to enter his or her ruling. Participants then receive feedback from the program suggesting why their ruling may or may not have been the most appropriate. At the conclusion of the trial, participants who impose sentence may compare their decisions against a compiled summary of their colleagues’ sentencing decisions.

Resources
Although this is a self-study course, you aren’t entirely on your own as you work through the civil and criminal proceedings. A number of resources, both real and hypothetical, are available to you as you make your rulings.

Case File
The case file is accessed through the yellow folder in the upper left corner of all the pages. It includes key documents on which these proceedings are based, including: an Order of Protection issued by an Arizona district court, a Petition for Order of Protection (filed in New Mexico), an Order of Protection issued by a New Mexico court, and a Criminal Complaint. Once you have reached the sentencing phase of the criminal case, you will also be able to access the Presentence Report in the case file. These documents are all hypothetical and should be used only as background information for your actions in these proceedings, not as models for real cases.

Enlarging the Case File The casefile will pop up in a separate browser window as a PDF document. You can enlarge the casefile in several ways: by clicking on the + sign in the Acrobat toolbar; typing in a higher percentage in the percentage box on the toolbar; or by dragging the lower right corner of the window to the desired size.

Web Links
Throughout the proceedings you will have access to a number of Judicial Education Center resources that may help in resolving these issues. The most useful resource should be the Domestic Violence Benchbook, which is accessible through the drop-down list that appears toward the bottom of each page of the proceedings. We have identified the corresponding sections of the benchbook on each question page, so that you can link directly to the section that relates most closely to the issues posed in the question. You can also access more general resources available on the JEC website through that list, including the Magistrate/Metropolitan Court Benchbook, the Judicial Handbook with its materials on evidence and “How-To” Guides to various proceedings, and the Municipal Judges’ Benchbook.

Certificate of Course Completion
JEC will issue a Certificate of Course Completion to individuals who certify they completed the virtual trial. This means that you watched all of the videotaped segments, worked through all of the exercises, and completed the evaluation form. Your signature on the electronic form certifies that you have completed these requirements.

CLE/CJE Credit
This virtual trial qualifies for three hours of Continuing Legal Education (CLE) and/or Continuing Judicial Education (CJE) credit. To obtain credit for the virtual trial, you must watch all of the videotaped segments and work through all of the exercises. Your signature on the Self-Reporting Form: CLE, CJE and Course Completion certifies that you completed these requirements. Partial credit will not be given.

CLE: This is a self-study educational program. MCLE Rule 18-203(D) limits self-study credits to five hours per year. Self-study credits may be applied only in the year in which they are earned and may not be carried forward to subsequent years or backward to prior years. JEC will report three self-study credits (all general/domestic violence) for completion of this virtual trial to the New Mexico MCLE Board. Attorneys who do not work for the New Mexico judiciary must pay the MCLE filing fee of $1 per credit hour.

CJE: JEC will maintain a record of the three CJE credit hours earned by judges and commissioners for this virtual trial.

Confidentiality
Your individual responses to various problems and evaluation questions, and any information that we may derive from our tracking of student progress through this program, will be kept confidential, except in so far as we may compile aggregated data for reporting purposes.