State v. Aguilar
| Decision Date | 07 October 2019 |
| Docket Number | NO. S-1-SC-35922,S-1-SC-35922 |
| Parties | STATE of New Mexico, Plaintiff-Appellant and Cross Appellee, v. Lloyd AGUILAR, Defendant-Appellee and Cross Appellant. |
| Court | New Mexico Supreme Court |
Bennett J. Baur, Chief Public Defender, William A. O’Connell, Assistant Appellate Defender, Santa Fe, NM, for Appellee and Cross Appellant.
Hector H. Balderas, Attorney General, John Kloss, Assistant Attorney General, Santa Fe, NM, for Appellant and Cross Appellee.
{1} After deliberation in a murder trial, the jury submitted executed verdict forms to the presiding trial judge. Noticing an apparent conflict in the verdicts, the trial judge, without the knowledge or participation of the parties, returned the forms to the jurors and directed them to read the instructions again and clarify their verdicts. The jury subsequently returned revised verdict forms, which the trial judge accepted in open court with the participation of the parties before the jury was discharged. On the following day, the trial judge notified the parties of his previously undisclosed ex parte contact with the jury. After a post-trial hearing on this issue, the trial court ordered a new trial on all charges on which the jury had returned final verdicts of guilty.
{2} Both the State of New Mexico and Defendant Lloyd Aguilar appealed the trial court’s order. The State asserts that the trial court’s grant of a new trial was in error and Defendant asserts that while the grant of a new trial was appropriate, the principles of double jeopardy bar retrial on the counts of murder and armed robbery. We hold that (1) the trial court’s new trial order was not an abuse of discretion, and (2) retrial of the counts on which the jury ultimately returned guilty verdicts would not constitute double jeopardy.
{3} Defendant was tried on an indictment charging a number of offenses related to a carjacking in which the victim was beaten and shot to death. Several of the charged offenses had complex alternative theories of culpability, which likely resulted in the jury confusion discussed herein.
{4} After the State rested its case, the trial court directed verdicts of acquittal for insufficiency of evidence on the charge of willful and deliberate first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit willful and deliberate first-degree murder, and conspiracy to commit unlawful taking of a motor vehicle. The trial court denied Defendant’s motions for acquittal on all remaining charges, including first-degree felony murder with a predicate offense of armed robbery, second-degree murder as a lesser-included offense of the first-degree willful and deliberate murder charge, conspiracy to commit first-degree felony murder, and conspiracy to commit second-degree murder.
{5} On the remaining charges, the trial court gave the jury thirty-one separate instructions. These instructions were complex and potentially confusing. To illustrate this point, we provide below a detailed discussion of the instructions given to the jury. We highlight two particular aspects of the instructions that may have attributed to the jury’s apparent confusion at deliberations. First, the jury was given two different elements instructions and verdict forms for second-degree murder: one for second-degree murder as an included offense of willful and deliberate first-degree murder, and another for second-degree murder as an included offense of first-degree felony murder (as an alternative to willful and deliberate first-degree murder). Second, the jury received a verdict form for "Felony Murder as charged in the alternative to Count 1" and a separate verdict form for "the alternative to Count 1." We discuss these two particularly confusing aspects of the jury instructions, along with the remainder of the instructions below.
{7} After receiving those three homicide elements instructions, the jury received a stepdown instruction that referenced only "the crimes of Felony Murder and Second Degree Murder as charged in the Alternative to Count 1," without mentioning the earlier elements instruction for the crime of second-degree murder of the same victim "as charged in Count 1." This stepdown instruction told the jury that it should initially deliberate on first-degree felony murder and move to second-degree murder only if it did not reach a guilty verdict on felony murder. The instruction cautioned that the jury could "not find the defendant guilty of more than one of the foregoing crimes" without explaining whether the term "foregoing" referred to all homicide crimes on which the jury had received elements instructions or only the two homicide crimes identified in the stepdown instruction. None of the instructions clearly addressed any relationship between the two second-degree murder instructions relating to the same victim.
{8} Although each elements instruction named the crime identified with the count number, a subsequent instruction describing verdict options for each count did little to avoid additional confusion:
{9} Along with the thirty-one jury instructions, the jury received twenty-one separate verdict forms to deliberate on and execute.
The trial judge also stated later that this was the only ex parte off-the-record contact between him and the jury.
{11} The jury revised the preliminary verdict forms and again submitted the package of forms to the trial court. In these revised verdict forms, the jury voided its preliminary verdict forms that facially indicated a verdict of not guilty "of the alternative to Count 1" and left intact its previous verdict form entry of guilty "of Felony Murder as charged in the alternative to Count 1." It also voided a previously signed not guilty verdict form for armed robbery and signed a guilty verdict form for that charge. The voided forms included strikethroughs of the foreperson’s previous signature accompanied by his initials, with the word "VOID" written above the strikethroughs and again below the signature block.
{12} The judge notified the parties of the verdict, convened court, and formally accepted the revised verdicts (the "final verdicts") on the record, without yet disclosing the jury’s earlier verdict submission or the resulting ex parte contact between the trial judge and the jury.
{13} The final verdicts reflected that the jury found Defendant guilty of felony murder as charged in the alternative to Count 1, guilty of conspiracy to commit felony murder as charged in the alternative to Count 2, guilty of armed robbery as charged in Count 3, guilty of conspiracy to commit armed robbery as charged in Count 4, guilty of tampering with evidence as charged in Count 5, guilty of unlawful taking of a motor vehicle as charged in Count 6, not guilty of second-degree murder as charged in Count 1, and not guilty of conspiracy to commit second-degree murder as charged in Count 2.
{14} When the jurors unanimously affirmed their final verdicts in a poll conducted in open court before they were discharged, the attorneys, still unaware of either the earlier verdict form submission or the ex parte contact between the trial judge and jury, did not question the jurors about the differences between the preliminary and final verdicts. The next day, the trial judge disclosed to counsel the earlier off-the-record ex parte exchange with the jury and agreed to consider the parties’ input and motions in response.
{15} Defendant requested alternative forms of relief in response to the disclosure of...
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... ... fact that the suspect fled the scene of the alleged stabbing ... by automobile. The Court of Appeals erred when it ... "substitute[d its] judgment of the facts for that of the ... [district] court." State v. Aguilar , ... 2019-NMSC-017, ¶ 49, 451 P.3d 550; see also State v ... Garcia , 2005-NMSC-017, ¶ 12, 138 N.M. 1, 116 P.3d ... 72 ("The court should not reweigh the evidence to ... determine if there was another hypothesis that would support ... innocence or replace the ... ...