SANTA FE, New Mexico—A startling rebuke of a local prosecutor and questions about legal tactics by a hard-charging sheriff are casting a shadow over efforts to prosecute members of an extended family who were arrested at a squalid New Mexico compound where the body of a 3-year-old had been hidden for months.
State politicians expressed alarm after child neglect charges were dismissed against all five defendants from the compound and three were set free with only misdemeanor trespassing charges against them. Allegations of anti-government plotting, jihad and martyrdom at the compound stocked with guns—drawn in part from FBI interviews with children—has done little to persuade judges of any immediate threat to public safety.
