State v. Jaramillo
| Decision Date | 23 November 2011 |
| Docket Number | Opinion Number: 2012-NMCA-029,Docket No. 28,517 |
| Parties | STATE OF NEW MEXICO, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. LEROY JARAMILLO, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | Court of Appeals of New Mexico |
Certiorari Denied, February 16, 2012, No. 33,401
APPEAL FROM THE DISTRICT COURT OF CURRY COUNTY
Gary K. King, Attorney General
Francine A. Chavez, Assistant Attorney General
for Appellee
Liane E. Kerr
Albuquerque, NM
for Appellant
{1} When a deputy medical examiner left the county medical examiner's office to go into private practice and subsequently required a hefty fee from the State for his trial testimony, the State put his former supervisor on the witness stand to testify to the autopsy that the first pathologist had conducted. In the course of the supervisor's testimony during direct examination, he read to the jury some contents of the autopsy report prepared by the absent doctor. The entire report was thereafter admitted as evidence and presented to the jury. Tothe extent the district court admitted the report as an exhibit, the admission was constitutional error as it violated Defendant's confrontation rights. Thus, we reverse Defendant's conviction.
{2} In October 2004, ten-month-old Cristyan Ibarra was taken to the emergency room in Clovis, New Mexico by his mother and Defendant. Owing to his symptoms, which included internal cranial bleeding, Cristyan was transported by air to Lubbock, Texas. There, he was pronounced dead several days later. Dr. Sridhar Natarajan, who at that time was employed by the Lubbock County Medical Examiner's Office, performed Cristyan's autopsy. Dr. Natarajan determined the cause of death to be closed head injuries and ruled the manner of death to be a homicide. The findings in the autopsy report were reviewed, confirmed, and signed off in a separate opinion document by four other medical examiners in the Lubbock County Medical Examiner's Office. Dr. Thomas Parsons, who later testified about the cause of Cristyan's death, was not one of these signatories.
{3} Dr. Natarajan eventually left the Lubbock County Medical Examiner's Office. When he was contacted by the State to testify at the trial in this case, he stated that he required a fee of $60,000 for his testimonial services. The State concluded that this sum of money was beyond its reach and made no further efforts to obtain his services. At trial, the State called Dr. Parsons, the Deputy Chief Medical Examiner for Lubbock County, to establish the cause and manner of Cristyan's death.
{4} Prior to Dr. Parsons being examined, the defense objected to any admission of the autopsy report into evidence based on the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The objection specifically asserted that the report was testimonial in nature and that Dr. Natarajan had not been shown to be unavailable as a witness. It is undisputed that the defense did not have an opportunity to cross-examine Dr. Natarajan. Defendant insisted that for the report and its contents to be admissible, its author, Dr. Natarajan, would be required to appear to testify about its contents. Defendant's specific objection was that any use of or reference to the report by Dr. Parsons would be improper because it "would [admit] otherwise . . . unpresentable [evidence by] just filtering it through an expert witness."
{5} Nonetheless, the district court admitted the report and permitted Dr. Parsons to testify to its contents. Dr. Parsons confirmed that he was testifying for Dr. Natarajan. At the district attorney's request, Dr. Parsons read directly from the autopsy report when testifying about Cristyan's age and the circumstances leading up to his death. Dr. Parsons also testified to Dr. Natarajan's specific observations and notations made during the autopsy. In addition, a section of the admitted autopsy report, signed by five non-testifying pathologists, stated: The report identified one other person as having assisted in the autopsy and that person did not testify at trial. Subsequently, Defendant was convicted of child abuse resulting in death. He now appeals on the ground that his right to confrontation was violated.
{6} Defendant argues that the district court erroneously admitted the autopsy report and improperly allowed Dr. Parsons to testify to the substantive findings that Dr. Natarajan recorded in the report. Because admission of the autopsy report alone constituted prejudicial error mandating reversal, we need not address Defendant's argument regarding Dr. Parsons' testimony.
{7} The district court explicitly admitted the report as information of the type upon which medical examiners would typically rely in rendering their opinions. At trial, Defendant objected to the report's admission on the ground that Defendant had no opportunity to confront Dr. Natarajan. The State responded that, In making its ruling, the district court referred directly to its belief that Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 51 (2004), did not address the "expert witness section of the New Mexico [R]ules of [E]vidence [with regard to] an expert testifying from a prior report using [that] as a basis for his opinion." We therefore review the district court's admission of the report as pursuant to Rule 11-703 NMRA and consider whether the admission of the report was a violation of Defendant's rights under the Confrontation Clause.
{8} "The Confrontation Clause guarantees the accused in a criminal trial the right to be confronted with the witnesses against him, regardless of how trustworthy the out-of-court statement may appear to be." State v. Mendez, 2010-NMSC-044, ¶ 28, 148 N.M. 761, 242 P.3d 328 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). "As a rule, if an out-of-court statement is testimonial in nature, it may not be introduced against the accused at trial unless the witness who made the statement is unavailable and the accused has had a prior opportunity to confront that witness." Bullcoming v. State, 131 S. Ct. 2705, 2713 (2011). Thus, we now analyze whether (1) the statements in the autopsy report were testimonial, (2) Defendant had a prior opportunity to cross-examine the declarant, and (3) the declarant was unavailable. We first address whether the statements were testimonial because "only testimonial statements cause the declarant to be a witness within the meaning of the Confrontation Clause." State v. Aragon, 2010-NMSC-008, ¶ 6, 147 N.M. 474, 225 P.3d 1280 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). "Questions of admissibility under the Confrontation Clause are questions of law, which we review de novo." Id.
{9} The United States Supreme Court held in Bullcoming that "[a] document created solely for an evidentiary purpose, . . . made in aid of a police investigation, ranks as testimonial." 131 S. Ct. at 2713 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); Melendez-Diaz v. Mass., 129 S. Ct. 2527, 2531 (2009) (). In Aragon, the New Mexico Supreme Court, adopting Melendez-Diaz,analyzed, in the context of reports of chemical analysis, what sort of forensic report might constitute a testimonial statement. Aragon, 2010-NMSC-008, ¶ 2. One factor the Aragon Court examined was the extent to which the person preparing the report exercised independent judgment and analysis. Id. ¶ 30. In this case, Dr. Natarajan's report containing his findings and conclusions resulting from Cristyan's autopsy included an exercise of judgment and analysis on his part, as he formed opinions based on his medical training and as he interpreted factual findings.
{10} Furthermore, the Aragon Court stated that a testimonial statement "is a solemn declaration or affirmation made for the purpose of establishing or proving some fact." Id. ¶ 6 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). In particular, Aragon considered whether the witness's "statements go to an issue of guilt or innocence." Id. ¶ 8. In this case, the autopsy report was made with the intention of the medical examiner to establish the cause and manner of Cristyan's death. The medical examiner's finding of homicide was critical to substantiate allegations that Defendant abused Cristyan and caused his death. Therefore, the autopsy report was prepared with the purpose of preserving evidence for criminal litigation. In this case, the face of the autopsy report itself states that an autopsy was requested because of "the circumstances" of Cristyan's death, being a severe brain injury of a sort commonly associated with trauma. By the time the medical examiner had determined the cause of death to be closed head injuries and the manner of death to be homicide, there was no doubt this would be used against someone in a criminal prosecution. NMSA 1978, Section 24-11-7 (1973) requires an autopsy with complete findings when a "medical investigator suspects a death was caused by a criminal act or omission or the cause of death is obscure[.]"
{11} Furthermore, Dr. Parsons testified that the report was prepared for use in litigation. There is no reason to suspect that a pathologist with considerable experience and knowledge of statutory duties to report suspicious deaths to law enforcement officers would not anticipate criminal litigation to result from his determination that the trauma-related death of a child was the result of homicide....
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