By Wheeler Cowperthwaite
Special to the SUN

Prosecutors dismissed a case against a Medanales man accused of indecent exposure after he took a plea deal for drug possession in an older case.

Prosecutors dismissed charges of resisting arrest, battery on an officer, indecent exposure, criminal trespass and disorderly conduct, filed on Nov. 4, 2025, against Jacob Velarde, 36. The incident exposure charge alleged he was rolling around with his pants down in Española.

Prosecutors dismissed the charges on Feb. 4, following a status conference in the case, after he was arrested on a Jan. 14 on a failure to appear warrant in the indecent exposure case.

Months earlier, on Nov. 24, Velarde pleaded guilty to possession of a controlled substance. The plea deal set his sentence at 18 months of unsupervised probation.

In the notice of dismissal, prosecutor Kent Wahlquist wrote that Velarde pleaded guilty in the controlled substance case. That plea deal makes no mention of the indecent exposure case.

Española Police Officer Andrew O’Hara issued the summons to Velarde on Nov. 4, following an attempted arrest on Oct. 30. O’Hara wrote in a criminal complaint that he was sent to 606 N. Monterey Lane for a man, “outside naked rolling around.”

At the scene he found Velarde lying on the ground “with his buttocks out of his pants.” When Velarde stood up, he told O’Hara that “his pants were never down and he was okay,” O’Hara wrote.

The officer took Velarde to the Española Hospital to get him cleared for jail, but he was irate and hospital staff sedated him and wouldn’t clear him for jail.

At the time of his arrest, prosecutor Edna Frances Sprague filed to have Velarde held without bail for violating the conditions of his pre-trial release, writing that it was the 10th case filed against him in magistrate court in 2025.

According to a review of online court records, five of the 10 misdemeanor cases filed in 2025 were dismissed because officers didn’t show up to the bench trials, both in Española and in Santa Fe. In three of those cases, Española Police Officer James Quintana didn’t show up and Española Officer Lucas Sanchez didn’t show up twice.