State v. Greenwood
| Citation | 271 P.3d 753,2012 -NMCA- 017 |
| Decision Date | 04 January 2012 |
| Docket Number | No. 29,959.,29,959. |
| Parties | STATE of New Mexico, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Sandra GREENWOOD, Defendant–Appellant. |
| Court | Court of Appeals of New Mexico |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Gary K. King, Attorney General, Andrew S. Montgomery, Assistant Attorney General, Santa Fe, NM, for Appellee.
Jacqueline L. Cooper, Acting Chief Public Defender, B. Douglas Wood III, Assistant Appellate Defender, Santa Fe, NM, for Appellant.
{1} A jury found Defendant Sandra Greenwood guilty of neglect of a resident resulting in death contrary to the Resident Abuse and Neglect Act (the Act), NMSA 1978, §§ 30–47–1 to –10 (1990, as amended through 2010). Defendant's developmentally disabled adult son, Jared, died while under her care and supervision in her home. We reject Defendant's constitutional vagueness attack and interpret the Act to cover and the evidence to support Defendant's grossly negligent failure to take any reasonable precaution necessary to prevent Jared's death and therefore affirm Defendant's conviction.
{2} Jared and his sister, Journey, were profoundly developmentally disabled adult children of Defendant. This case involves Jared, who was totally dependent on Defendant for his hygiene, grooming, bathing, medications, and cognitive functioning. Jared also required assistance from Defendant with going to the bathroom, getting dressed, and eating.
{3} At times, more particularly discussed later in this Opinion, Defendant was employed by LINKS II (LINKS), a privately owned personal care agency that employed caregivers who would provide in-home, non-medical care to its clients. LINKS clients are individuals, such as Jared and Journey, who are over the age of twenty-one and who require non-medical assistance, and approximately sixty to seventy percent of LINKS employees are family members of the clients. The caregivers are employed to provide assistance to the clients with such things as cognitive functioning, including cues, reminders and prompts, as well as assistance with light household cleaning, preparing meals, bathing, errands, mobility, and durable medical equipment maintenance. In order to qualify for the LINKS program, prospective clients are required to be examined by a medical doctor who would assess the prospective client's daily living needs and, if necessary, would recommend the need for a caregiver's assistance.
{4} A care plan for Jared through LINKS was in place from February 2006 to February 2007. This care plan required Defendant as caregiver to devote one hour each day to assist Jared with bowel and bladder functions, thirty minutes each day for cognitive assistance, fifteen minutes each day to help Jared eat, two to three hours each week for household chores, one hour each day for Jared's hygiene, and thirty minutes each day to prepare meals for Jared. A care plan through LINKS was in place for Journey starting in November 2006, with Defendant as the caregiver. The details of Journey's care plan were not in evidence at trial.
{5} To remain in the LINKS program, clients are required to see a doctor every year; that is, annual renewal of each care contract was conditioned on an annual medical assessment. Defendant failed to obtain that medical assessment for Jared despite LINKS personnel's efforts to help arrange for the medical assessment. That failure caused the care contract for Jared to lapse in February 2007, after which LINKS paid Defendant to provide care for only Journey at the family's residence. Jared died in September 2007 in the family residence.
{6} On a Saturday evening in September 2007, Defendant contacted her brother and told him that Jared was not “feeling right.” Her brother agreed to help Defendant take Jared to the emergency room the next morning if Jared was not better. Sometime the next day, Defendant called her brother to report that Jared was dead. Defendant's brother-in-law arrived at the residence that afternoon and told Defendant that they had to call the police. At Defendant's request, the brother-in-law gave Defendant thirty minutes before notifying the police.
{7} Upon arriving at the residence late that afternoon, a detective noticed an overwhelming stench of trash, as if at the dump, along with the smell of feces and the smell of a dead body. He saw Jared's body lying face up on the bathroom floor, and it appeared that someone had attempted to clean the area up around the body, in spite of which attempt Jared's arms, legs, hands, feet, back and face were caked with dried feces, blood, dirt, and trash. Jared's head lay near the toilet, which contained no water but was almost overflowing with feces. Gaping wounds, consisting of pressure ulcers, covered much of Jared's body, including his arms, trunk, chest, abdomen, buttocks, and legs down to his toes. Later examination determined that the pressure ulcers indicated that Jared had been lying on the affected parts of his body for an extended period of time. A forensic pathologist testified regarding the amount of time it takes for pressure ulcers to develop, as well as precautions that should be taken in order to prevent infection of blood by bacteria that enters through such open wounds. Jared suffered from at least eleven areas of ulceration, the majority of which were described as being Stage 4, which is the most deep and severe of ulcer classification.
{8} In an adjacent bedroom, a tablecloth and plastic bed sheet had been placed over the carpet which was covered with fecal matter and trash. The kitchen and living room were piled four feet high with garbage, food, dirt, and dead insects. Narrow pathways cut through the heaps of refuse. As the detective photographed the living room area, he discovered Journey sitting amongst the rubble.
{9} At the scene, Defendant told a police officer that Jared's death was her fault because she did not take care of him. She voluntarily went to the police station where she gave a videotaped interview. She stated that she did not know Jared was sick, that she did not understand why she did not know, and that there was no excuse or explanation. Distraught and in tears, Defendant also stated,
He shouldn't be gone, it's my fault, and I can't fix it.... He was one hundred percent dependent on me for his life, and I failed him. And it's my fault. I have no explanation and no excuses, and I'm not ever going to offer one. There is no reason for Jared to be gone except for my negligence or my not paying attention. But it wasn't because I didn't care.
{10} Defendant was charged with neglect of Jared, a resident in a care facility, resulting in Jared's death, a second degree felony under Section 30–47–5(D) of the Act (the neglect charge). She moved unsuccessfully to dismiss the neglect charge on the grounds that, as a matter of law for the purposes of the Act, her residence was not a “care facility” as it related to Jared, he was not a “resident” of a care facility, and the Act was void because it is unconstitutionally vague. The jury found Defendant guilty of the neglect charge.1
{11} Defendant's points on appeal are that (1) the jury instructions were confusing, making it impossible to know if she was convicted under a proper legal standard; (2) the Act, as a matter of law, was not intended to apply to her house because it does not qualify as a care facility and was not intended to apply to Jared because he did not qualify as a “resident” for purposes of the Act; (3) the Act is void for vagueness on the facts of the case; (4) the State failed to present sufficient evidence for a conviction; and (5) the district court erred in not holding mid-trial voir dire owing to the significant media exposure of the case.
{12} Under State v. Benally, 2001–NMSC–033, 131 N.M. 258, 34 P.3d 1134, on review we determine whether a reasonable juror would have been confused or misdirected by the jury instruction. Id. ¶ 12. “Under fundamental error review, ... the jury verdict will not be reversed unless necessary to prevent a miscarriage of justice.” State v. Sandoval, 2011–NMSC–022, ¶ 13, 150 N.M. 224, 258 P.3d 1016 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
{13} There exists no uniform jury instruction for violation of the Act. The district court gave the following elements instruction, Instruction No. 4, to the jury.
For you to find ... [D]efendant guilty of neglect of a resident resulting in death, as charged in Count 1, the State must prove to your satisfaction beyond a reasonable doubt each of the following elements of the crime:
1. Jared ... was an adult who resided at [Defendant's] residence;
2. [Defendant's] residence was a care facility;
3. [Defendant], subject to Jared['s] ... right to refuse treatment and subject to [Defendant's] right to exercise sound medical discretion, was grossly negligent in her failure to take any reasonable precaution that was necessary to prevent damage to Jared['s] ... health;
4. [Defendant's] failure resulted in Jared['s] ... death;
5. This happened in New Mexico on or about the 30th day of September 2007.
Instruction No. 5 added that the jury had to find that Defendant's gross negligence was a significant cause of Jared's death. The court also gave Instruction No. 8 containing a lesser-included offense of neglect of a resident resulting in no harm.
{14} Defendant appears to have objected to the elements instruction on the neglect charge, and she offered her own elements instruction, which the court refused. The pertinent additional elements Defendant added were that the jury was required to find that “[Defendant] was Jared['s] caretaker”; as his caretaker, “[Defendant] failed to take a reasonable precaution regarding Jared” and failed to take precaution “necessary to prevent damage to the health and safety of Jared”; and Defendant “did not exercise sound medical discretion[.]”
{15} Based on an arguable belief that Jared would not require...
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