State v. Guerra

• Decision Date: 09 August 2012
• Docket Number: No. 33,052.,33,052.
• Citation: 284 P.3d 1076,2012 -NMSC- 027
• Parties: STATE of New Mexico, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Luciano P. GUERRA, Defendant–Appellant.
• Court: New Mexico Supreme Court

284 P.3d 1076

2012 -NMSC- 027

STATE of New Mexico, Plaintiff–Appellee,

v.Luciano P. GUERRA, Defendant–Appellant.

No. 33,052.

Supreme Court of New Mexico.

Aug. 9, 2012.

Liane E. Kerr, L.L.C., Liane E. Kerr, Albuquerque, NM, for Appellant.

Gary K. King, Attorney General, Olga Serafimova, Assistant Attorney General, Santa Fe, NM, for Appellee.

OPINION

DANIELS, Justice.

{1} Defendant was convicted of first-degree murder and tampering with evidence in the fatal stabbing of Andrew Gama during a fight at a Clovis apartment complex in March 2010. In his direct appeal to this Court, he argues that (1) there was insufficient evidence to support his conviction for tampering with evidence, (2) the district court abused its discretion by denying his motion for a new trial when two defense exhibits left on counsel table after closing arguments were not included with other exhibits provided to the jury during deliberation, (3) he received ineffective assistance of counsel because his attorney failed to ensure the return of the two exhibits for delivery to the jury room, (4) there was insufficient evidence to support the first-degree murder conviction, and (5) through various other claimed errors the district court denied him due process of law.

{2} In this Opinion, we clarify the standard for sufficiency of evidence to support tampering-with-evidence convictions and reverse Defendant's tampering conviction. We reject the remainder of Defendant's claims and uphold his first-degree murder conviction.

I. BACKGROUND

{3} Defendant was at a party at the Clovis apartment of Erica Nañez on the night of the killing. While at the party, Erica and four other witnesses saw Defendant playing with a folding white pocketknife that Defendant claimed he carried for protection. At one point, Erica asked Defendant to put the knife away, which he apparently did.

{4} Around midnight, a group of uninvited people unexpectedly showed up at the party, and a fight broke out between one of them and one of Erica's guests. A separate fight took place between Defendant and the uninvited victim, Andrew Gama, who apparently had been in a fight with Defendant's cousin a few days before. According to most of the witnesses at trial, the fight between Defendant and the victim was “one on one,” and the victim did not have a weapon.

{5} When someone yelled that the police were coming, the fighting stopped and the uninvited group began running away. The victim, bleeding heavily, fell to the ground while running and was helped to a car by a friend, who drove the victim to the hospital where the victim later died.

{6} Defendant returned to Erica's apartment, where several witnesses testified that Defendant said “I think I stabbed that fool seven or eight times. I stabbed that fool.” When asked to describe how Defendant was acting after the fight, Erica told the jury that Defendant and his companions were acting “fine, like nothing, like high-fiving each other.”

{7} The autopsy of the victim revealed that he suffered thirteen stab wounds in the left side of his chest and that the wounds were consistent with a single-edged knife. Stab wounds to the victim's heart, left lung, and spleen were the cause of death. The victim had no injuries to his hands or arms, and marijuana and alcohol were found in his blood. The police searched Defendant's house but could not find the clothes Defendant wore to the party or the knife used to inflict the fatal wounds.

{8} The jury convicted Defendant of first-degree murder and tampering with evidence, and the district court sentenced Defendant to life in prison for the murder and three years in prison, concurrently, for tampering. Because Defendant received a life sentence, he appealed directly to this Court. See N.M. Const. Art. VI, § 2 (“Appeals from a judgment of the district court imposing a sentence of death or life imprisonment shall be taken directly to the supreme court.”); accordRule 12–102(A)(1) NMRA.

II. DISCUSSIONA. The Evidence Was Insufficient to Convict Defendant of Tampering with Evidence.

{9} Defendant argues that his conviction for tampering with evidence should be overturned because the facts that Defendant had a knife and that no knife was later recovered after the killing are, by themselves, insufficient as a matter of law to support the conviction. The State concedes that the evidence was insufficient as a matter of law to uphold Defendant's tampering conviction; and while we are not bound by this concession, see State v. Foster, 1999–NMSC–007, ¶ 25, 126 N.M. 646, 974 P.2d 140,abrogated on other grounds by State v. Frazier, 2007–NMSC–032, ¶¶ 31, 35, 142 N.M. 120, 164 P.3d 1, we agree.

1. Standard of Review

{10} “The test for sufficiency of the evidence is whether substantial evidence of either a direct or circumstantial nature exists to support a verdict of guilty beyond a reasonable doubt with respect to every element essential to a conviction.” State v. Riley, 2010–NMSC–005, ¶ 12, 147 N.M. 557, 226 P.3d 656 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). The reviewing court “view[s] the evidence in the light most favorable to the guilty verdict, indulging all reasonable inferences and resolving all conflicts in the evidence in favor of the verdict.” State v. Cunningham, 2000–NMSC–009, ¶ 26, 128 N.M. 711, 998 P.2d 176. “The question before us as a reviewing [c]ourt is not whether we would have had a reasonable doubt [about guilt] but whether it would have been impermissibly unreasonable for a jury to have concluded otherwise.” See State v. Rudolfo, 2008–NMSC–036, ¶ 29, 144 N.M. 305, 187 P.3d 170.

2. Tampering with Evidence Requires Proof in Some Form of a Defendant's Specific Intent to Tamper.

{11} In order to prove that Defendant tampered with evidence, the State had to prove that (1) Defendant hid physical evidence; (2) he did so with the intent to prevent his apprehension, prosecution, or conviction; and (3) this happened in New Mexico on or about the date specified in the criminal information. UJI 14–2241 NMRA; seeNMSA 1978, § 30–22–5(A) (2003).

{12} This Court has previously recognized that the crime of tampering with evidence requires evidence that the defendant specifically intended to tamper with evidence. In State v. Silva, the state successfully argued at trial that the defendant tampered with evidence solely because (1) the defendant had a gun at the scene of the crime, (2) a gun was used to murder the victim, (3) the murder weapon was removed from the scene, and (4) the murder weapon was never recovered. 2008–NMSC–051, ¶ 17, 144 N.M. 815, 192 P.3d 1192. We explained that “[t]ampering with evidence is a specific intent crime, requiring sufficient evidence from which the jury can infer that the defendant acted with an intent to prevent apprehension, prosecution or conviction of any person or to throw suspicion of the commission of a crime upon another.” Id. ¶ 18 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). We held that the evidence was insufficient as a matter of law to sustain the conviction because the state “offered no direct evidence to show that [the d]efendant intended to disrupt the police investigation, nor did it provide any evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, of an overt act on [the d]efendant's part from which the jury could infer such intent.” Id. ¶ 19. Instead, the state “effectively asked the jury to speculate that an overt act of ... hiding [the murder weapon] had taken place, based solely on the fact that such evidence was never found.” Id. (alterations in original) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).

{13} In explaining our conclusion, we noted that “[i]ntent is subjective and is almost always inferred from other facts in the case, as it is rarely established by direct evidence.” Id. ¶ 18 (alteration in original) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). But after that clear discussion of the proper role of circumstantial evidence, we concluded by saying: “However, absent both direct evidence of a defendant's specific intent to tamper and evidence of an overt act from which the jury may infer such intent, the evidence cannot support a tampering conviction.” Id.

{14} Taken out of context, that single sentence could be misconstrued as requiring both direct and circumstantial evidence of intent to tamper, instead of either. Such an unprecedented dual requirement would make prosecution of tampering with evidence possible only when the defendant has explicitly admitted that the act of tampering was committed with the intent to elude capture or prosecution, which has never been the standard. We did not intend such a reading of the law. Silva should have said that “absent either direct evidence of a defendant's specific intent to tamper or evidence from which the factfinder may infer such intent, the evidence cannot support a tampering conviction.” See State v. Nathaniel Duran, 2006–NMSC–035, ¶ 16, 140 N.M. 94, 140 P.3d 515, noting that this Court's reversal of a tampering conviction for insufficiency of supporting evidence

does not mean that direct evidence is necessary to prove tampering with evidence. Statements by defendants and witnesses regarding the disposition of evidence may allow a jury to reasonably infer an overt act and intent, as may many other kinds of circumstantial evidence that would tend to prove a defendant acted to tamper with evidence and in so acting intended to thwart a police investigation. Rather, we hold that it is the State's burden to prove each element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt, and the proof offered here, with no direct or circumstantial evidence regarding an overt act and no reasonable way for a jury to infer intent, falls short of that burden.

{15} Accordingly, we clarify Silva insofar as it may have inadvertently suggested that the state must always present both direct and circumstantial evidence of a defendant's specific intent to tamper in order to convict the defendant of tampering with evidence.

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