State v. Diaz, 35,563
| Decision Date | 27 February 2017 |
| Docket Number | NO. 35,563,35,563 |
| Parties | STATE OF NEW MEXICO, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. JUAN DIAZ, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | Court of Appeals of New Mexico |
This memorandum opinion was not selected for publication in the New Mexico Appellate Reports. Please see Rule 12-405 NMRA for restrictions on the citation of unpublished memorandum opinions. Please also note that this electronic memorandum opinion may contain computer-generated errors or other deviations from the official paper version filed by the Court of Appeals and does not include the filing date.
APPEAL FROM THE DISTRICT COURT OF BERNALILLO COUNTY
Hector H. Balderas, Attorney General
for Appellee
Bennett J. Baur, Chief Public Defender
Allison H. Jaramillo, Assistant Appellate Defender
Santa Fe, NM
for Appellant
{1} Defendant appeals his conviction for careless driving, which arose out of an accident in which he rear-ended another vehicle. We issued a notice of proposed summary disposition proposing to affirm, and Defendant has responded with a memorandum in opposition and motion to amend the docketing statement. We have carefully considered the arguments raised in the memorandum as well as the applicable law, and we continue to believe that affirmance is warranted in this case. We therefore affirm Defendant's conviction. In doing so, we deny the motion to amend the docketing statement as unnecessary.
{2} Defendant asks that the following issue be added to his docketing statement: whether the district court abused its discretion in granting the State's mid-trial request for a thirty-day continuance. [MIO 1, 9] In our notice, we stated that this issue was impliedly raised in the docketing statement, and we addressed it. Therefore, while we commend appellate counsel for taking care to ensure that the issue has been explicitly raised, we find it unnecessary to allow amendment of the docketing statement in order to decide the issue. We deny the motion to amend as unnecessary.
{3} The first issue we addressed in the notice was Defendant's challenge to the district court's ruling that allowed the State to amend its witness list after the trial hadalready commenced, to add an expert witness. The facts underlying that issue are as follows. The State initially identified three deputies as witnesses (among other witnesses), who would testify as accident reconstructionists and regarding their investigation of the collision. [RP 11-12] The State apparently indicated to Defendant that these deputies would be testifying about data received from a Crash Data Retrieval (CDR) system that had been retrieved from Defendant's vehicle following the collision.1 Defendant filed a motion in limine directed at several different types of evidence, and in that motion included a challenge to the deputies' testimony concerning the CDR system. [RP 31] Defendant did not specify what the challenge to the testimony was, apart from a general assertion that the testimony would lack anadequate foundation. [Id.] Defendant's memorandum in opposition states that this foundational challenge "was not challenging the science underlying the CDR system data" but does not further clarify the basis for the challenge. [MIO 5]
{4} The district court refused to address this part of the motion before trial, and instead it informed Defendant that a Daubert motion should have been filed rather than a motion in limine. [Id. 2] Defendant did not file such a motion before trial; however, during the trial, Defendant again objected to the admission of testimony about the CDR data, and the district court agreed with Defendant's argument that expert testimony was necessary on that topic. [Id. 3] Instead of simply excluding the CDR evidence, the district court granted the State a continuance of the trial for thirty days, to allow the State to find an expert to testify about the CDR system and data. [Id.] The State subsequently amended its witness list to add Stan Lundy as an expert in crash reconstruction and CDR systems. [RP 40] This amendment occurred on December 31, 2015, eight days before trial resumed.
{5} Defendant contends that allowing the State to amend its witness list in the middle of trial was an abuse of discretion. Defendant does not claim that he had an inadequate opportunity to interview Mr. Lundy prior to his testimony, or to find an expert of his own who might be able to contradict Mr. Lundy's opinion, or that he in any way was hampered in preparing for Mr. Lundy's testimony and cross-examination. Defendant simply argues that the State violated its obligations under Rules 5-501 and 5-505 NMRA, which require the State to disclose its witnesses in a timely manner and establish a continuing duty of disclosure as new evidence or witnesses come to light. Defendant maintains that, when he filed his motion in limine, the State was put on notice that it would need expert testimony concerning the CDR system, and the State therefore should not have been granted the opportunity to add Mr. Lundy as a new witness. [MIO 6-8]
{6} As we stated in our notice, and as Defendant acknowledges, we review the district court's action in this matter only for abuse of discretion. See State v. Griffin, 1988-NMCA-101, ¶¶ 10-14, 108 N.M. 55, 766 P.2d 315 (). Under the circumstances, we cannot find an abuse of discretion here. Although Defendant argues that the State was on notice of the need to procure an expert once he filed his motion in limine, that motion was not granted. The district court instead informed Defendant that he should have filed a Daubert motion to challenge admission of the CDR evidence. At that point, therefore, the State had no reason to believe an expert would be needed to support admission of the evidence. It was only after the trial started, and Defendant successfully raised the issue again, that the State was put on notice thatexpert testimony was necessary. Given the district court's mid-trial ruling that seemed to contradict its earlier refusal to exclude the evidence, the district court did not abuse its discretion by allowing the State to amend its witness list at that point.
{7} In addition, even if the State had somehow been negligent in failing to procure a CDR expert earlier in the proceedings, the district court still had discretion to allow the State's untimely amendment of the witness list. Our Supreme Court has stated firmly that "the mere showing of violation of a discovery order, without a showing of prejudice, is not grounds for sanctioning a party." State v. Harper, 2011-NMSC-044, ¶ 16, 150 N.M. 745, 266 P.3d 25. The Harper Court added that "even when a party has acted with a high degree of culpability" exclusion of key evidence is only proper if "the opposing party suffered tangible prejudice." Id. ¶ 19. As we pointed out above, there is no indication that the late disclosure of Mr. Lundy as an expert witness prejudiced Defendant. Defendant attempts to argue that he was prejudiced because the CDR evidence was "the State's strongest evidence of careless driving and speeding." [MIO 8] However, the fact that the district court's action allowed the State an opportunity to strengthen its case is not the type of prejudice contemplated by Harper. Instead, prejudice that would justify excluding important evidence occurs if the defendant is hampered in his ability to prepare his case or to offer a defense to the newly-disclosed evidence. See Harper, ¶¶ 19, 20 (). In this case Defendant had time to interview Mr. Lundy before the trial resumed, since he was disclosed as an expert eight days before that resumption. While it is not clear whether Defendant took advantage of that opportunity, it is clear that he has not argued that his preparation for trial was impaired in any way. For this reason also, the district court did not abuse its discretion in allowing the mid-trial amendment of the State's witness list.
{8} As a corollary to the late-disclosure-of-expert argument, Defendant maintains that the district court abused its discretion in granting the State a thirty-day continuance in which to locate a CDR expert. Again, Defendant recognizes that the grant or denial of a continuance lies within the sound discretion of the trial court. State v. Salazar, 2007-NMSC-004, ¶ 10, 141 N.M. 148, 152 P.3d 135. Defendant contends, however, that the district court abused its discretion because the State was at fault in causing the need for the continuance, the continuance was for too long a period of time, and Defendant was prejudiced by the continuance. [MIO 10-12]
{9} For the same reasons as those we discussed above, we do not agree that the State was at fault; until the district court ruled mid-trial that an expert would be needed to support admission of the CDR evidence, the State did not have a reason to believe that would be true. As for the length of the continuance, the mere fact that thecontinuance was for thirty days, rather than a shorter period of time, does not establish an abuse of discretion as a matter of law. Defendant has pointed to nothing that happened during those thirty days that might have prejudiced his defense in any legally-cognizable way. His only argument in favor of prejudice is the same one that we rejected above---that the CDR evidence was important evidence for the State, and the delay in the trial allowed the State the opportunity to do what it needed to in order to obtain admission of that evidence. In sum, we do not find an abuse of discretion under the circumstances of this case. Cf. State v. Anderson, 1989-NMCA-096, ¶ 9, 110 N.M. 382, 796 P.2d...
To continue reading
Request your trial