State v. Nelson

• Decision Date: 31 July 2015
• Docket Number: No. 20100157.,20100157.
• Citation: 2015 UT 62,355 P.3d 1031
• Parties: STATE of Utah, Appellee, v. Martin Chris NELSON, Appellant.
• Court: Utah Supreme Court

355 P.3d 1031

2015 UT 62

STATE of Utah, Appellee

v.Martin Chris NELSON, Appellant.

No. 20100157.

Supreme Court of Utah.

July 31, 2015.

Sean D. Reyes, Att'y Gen., John J. Nielsen, Asst. Att'y Gen., Salt Lake City, for appellee.

Elizabeth Hunt, Salt Lake City, for appellant.

Justice HIMONAS authored the opinion of the Court, in which Chief Justice DURRANT, Associate Chief Justice LEE, Justice DURHAM, and Justice PARRISH joined.

Justice HIMONAS, opinion of the Court:

INTRODUCTION

¶ 1 Martin Chris Nelson shot and killed Chad Grijalva and Derek Davis. He shot each man eight times—hitting them with all sixteen bullets in his gun—including an “immediately incapacitating” shot to the side of each man's head. After killing the two men, Mr. Nelson placed their bodies in a shallow grave, which he covered with trash, human excrement, and a dead cat. At trial, Mr. Nelson contended he had acted in self-defense. The jury disagreed and convicted Mr. Nelson of two counts of aggravated murder. He was sentenced to two consecutive terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Mr. Nelson now appeals and brings seven claims of ineffective assistance of counsel (IAC). Because we hold that defense counsel either did not perform deficiently or that Mr. Nelson was not prejudiced by any alleged deficiencies, we affirm.

BACKGROUND

¶ 2 On the date of the murders, October 24, 2007, Mr. Nelson was living in a trailer on an isolated piece of property in the sagebrush desert near Beryl, Utah.¹ The property was known as “the ranch.” When Mr. Nelson's friends would visit him there, they would ride four-wheelers and motorcycles, “party,” “[get] drunk,” and “[do] drugs,” including methamphetamine (meth) and marijuana.

¶ 3 Mr. Grijalva was one such friend. But after a plan to grow psychedelic mushrooms together “didn't work out very well,” Mr. Nelson became angry with Mr. Grijalva. Approximately six months before the murders, Mr. Nelson began “ranting” and “raving” about Mr. Grijalva to a mutual friend, Ty Taylor. Mr. Nelson told Mr. Taylor, “I am going to kill Chad [Grijalva] one day. And I am going to go out and start killing folks. And you are going to see me on the news.” But after some time passed, Mr. Nelson and Mr. Grijalva apparently reconciled and “started drinking and partying, same as usual.”

¶ 4 Sometime during the late afternoon on the day of the murders, Mr. Grijalva and Mr. Davis headed to the ranch to pick up some meth that Mr. Nelson had agreed to obtain for Mr. Grijalva. That morning, Mr. Nelson told his friend Cory Morrison that some people were coming over who he did not “really want to deal with.” He also called his friend Richie Mathiesen and said, “I need you to talk me out of killing some folks.” Indeed, Mr. Nelson acknowledged at trial that he was “mad” at Mr. Grijalva, and that, among the various debts between them, Mr. Nelson “owed [Mr. Grijalva] for some mushrooms.” Additionally, Mr. Nelson was suspicious of Mr. Davis, whom he did not know very well. Mr. Nelson was not keen to have “anybody at the ranch that [he] didn't know.” He was also concerned because he had been told by a friend that Mr. Davis was “a snitch.”

¶ 5 After Mr. Grijalva and Mr. Davis arrived at the ranch, Mr. Nelson gave Mr. Grijalva the meth he had purchased for him. But Mr. Grijalva was “upset” by the amount and told Mr. Nelson it was not enough. To mollify Mr. Grijalva, Mr. Nelson brought out some of his own stash as a “peace offering.” Mr. Grijalva wanted to smoke the meth out at the ranch because he could not smoke freely at his own home. Despite his misgivings about Mr. Davis, Mr. Nelson agreed and the three went into the trailer and began to get high. According to Mr. Nelson, when the pipe was passed to Mr. Grijalva, Mr. Grijalva said it was empty. Mr. Nelson testified he became angry because “it's a common trick between meth heads” to steal drugs in a group setting by claiming the pipe is empty. Mr. Nelson explained he was “mad because it was empty” and “started raging.” At this point, the State's and Mr. Nelson's stories significantly diverge.

¶ 6 Mr. Nelson testified that as he got up to put his drugs away, Mr. Davis hit him in the face and then Mr. Davis and Mr. Grijalva attacked him inside the trailer. After a struggle, Mr. Nelson said he grabbed his gun—a .22 caliber, lever-action Henry rifle—and “just started shooting.” He told the jury that as he was shooting, “nobody was stopping from hitting me. Nobody was stopping anything that they were doing.” He also asserted he was on the floor during the assault and could only see out of one eye because his other eye was “full of blood.” During this time, Mr. Nelson stated that he was “turn [ing] every which way” and “shooting all over the place,” as he was getting “kick[ed] in the face” by his assailants. “[T]owards the end,” Mr. Nelson testified, “Derek, I thought he jumped on me. But, at the last, I realized he was dead. And Chad was dead. And they were still on top of me.” Despite this allegedly tumultuous scene, Mr. Nelson hit Mr. Grijalva and Mr. Davis with every bullet in his gun (eight shots each), including what would have been an “immediately incapacitating” shot to the side of each man's head. When questioned about that feat, Mr. Nelson claimed that it would have been “pretty tough not to in that little tiny area.” But the medical examiner found no evidence of gunfire stippling or soot on either of the victims, evidence that would corroborate a melee of the sort described by Mr. Nelson.

¶ 7 After shooting Mr. Grijalva and Mr. Davis, Mr. Nelson set about to cover up the murders. He dragged the bodies out of the trailer and dumped them in a nearby hole he had been digging for a septic tank. There was blood all over the carpet in the trailer, so Mr. Nelson tore it out and disposed of it. He later painted the floor of the trailer. And after learning that the sheriff was looking for Mr. Davis's white pickup truck, Mr. Nelson began dismantling it in an effort to “get it all cut up and get rid of it all.”

¶ 8 Upon receiving reports that Mr. Grijalva and Mr. Davis had gone missing, the police began to investigate their disappearance. Iron County Sheriff Mark Gower learned that the last phone call Mr. Grijalva had made was to Mr. Nelson, so he began to search for both Mr. Nelson and the missing white truck. On November 16, 2007, Sheriff Gower brought Mr. Nelson in and questioned him about his contact with Mr. Grijalva on the day Mr. Grijalva went missing. During the interview, Mr. Nelson lied and said Mr. Grijalva had never showed up to meet him that day. Shortly thereafter, the investigators obtained a search warrant for the ranch.² During the search, they confirmed the presence of a partially-dismantled white truck that appeared to match Mr. Davis's missing one. The investigators then obtained a second search warrant for a more thorough search of the ranch, which they executed early in the morning on November 17. During the second search, cadaver dogs alerted in Mr. Nelson's shed. The sheriff's team began digging and discovered Mr. Grijalva and Mr. Davis's bodies under a pile of trash and human waste.

¶ 9 The State charged Mr. Nelson with two counts of aggravated murder and one count of theft by receiving a stolen motor vehicle. The defense argued that Mr. Nelson had acted in self-defense. After a seven-day trial, the jury found Mr. Nelson guilty of all three crimes, and the trial judge sentenced him to two consecutive terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole on the aggravated murder counts, as well as a concurrent sentence of one to fifteen years on the theft count. Mr. Nelson timely appealed, asserting six IAC claims. This court granted Mr. Nelson's motion for remand under rule 23B of the Utah Rules of Appellate Procedure and stayed the appeal. Following a hearing, the district court made factual findings and rejected all six of Mr. Nelson's claims. He now appeals the rejection of those claims and adds a seventh IAC claim.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

¶ 10 In order to prevail on his IAC claims, Mr. Nelson must show both (1) “that counsel's performance was deficient” and (2) that “there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel's unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different.” Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 687, 694, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984). To satisfy this test, Mr. Nelson “must overcome the strong presumption that [his] trial counsel rendered adequate assistance by persuading the court that there was no conceivable tactical basis for counsel's” acts or omissions. State v. Clark, 2004 UT 25, ¶ 6, 89 P.3d 162 (alteration in original) (citation omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted). He must also prove “that, absent those acts or omissions, there is a ‘reasonable probability’ of a more favorable result.” State v. Chacon, 962 P.2d 48, 50 (Utah 1998). And “[t]he proof that such [acts or] omissions prejudiced [him] must be a demonstrable reality and not a speculative matter.”Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).

¶ 11 In evaluating whether Mr. Nelson has carried this “heavy burden,” with respect to the six IAC claims that were the subjects of the rule 23B hearing, id., we defer to the district court's findings of fact, “but review its legal conclusions for correctness,” State v. Wright, 2013 UT App 142, ¶ 10, 304 P.3d 887 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also State v. Taylor, 947 P.2d 681, 685 (Utah 1997). With respect to Mr. Nelson's seventh IAC claim, which he raises for the first time on appeal, we have determined that the factual record before us is adequate and therefore proceed to evaluate this claim “as a matter of law.” Chacon, 962 P.2d at 50.

ANALYSIS

¶ 12 The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution grants a criminal defendant the right to have “the Assistance of Counsel” for his defense. And the United States Supreme Court has clarified that “the right to counsel is the right to the effective...