State v. Lopez, 2006-800.
| Decision Date | 09 November 2007 |
| Docket Number | No. 2006-800.,2006-800. |
| Citation | 937 A.2d 905 |
| Parties | The STATE of New Hampshire v. Robert LOPEZ. |
| Court | New Hampshire Supreme Court |
Kelly A. Ayotte, attorney general (Charles J. Keefe, assistant attorney general, on the brief and orally), for the State.
Theodore Lothstein, assistant appellate defender, of Concord, on the brief and orally, for the defendant.
The defendant, Robert Lopez, appeals his conviction following a jury trial in the Superior Court (Lewis, J.) for first degree murder. See RSA 630:1-a (2007). We affirm.
The record supports the following facts. In January 2005, the defendant met Brandi Bernard at Labor Ready, a temporary employment agency in Manchester for which Bernard worked. Bernard and the defendant began dating in February 2005, and within a month had moved in together. According to various witnesses, the couple often argued, and during their arguments would scream, yell and engage in name-calling. Also, Bernard's friend testified that on one occasion while he was driving the defendant to work, the defendant stated that Bernard would sometimes make him very angry and he punched the dashboard of the car, cracking it.
Shortly after their relationship began, the defendant became very possessive and began regularly checking on Bernard's whereabouts. A source of the defendant's possessiveness was his jealousy over Bernard's relationship with a former boyfriend. The defendant's co-worker testified that the defendant stated that if he ever caught Bernard cheating, he would kill her. Other witnesses also described various instances of the defendant's hostile or threatening behavior toward Bernard.
In July 2005, Bernard told several friends and family members that she wished to end the relationship. Also around this time, Bernard disclosed that she was pregnant with the defendant's child. Shortly after stating that she wished to end the relationship, Bernard broke up with the defendant and moved out of the couple's apartment and into her mother's home. Over the ensuing days, various relatives helped Bernard move her belongings out of the apartment. On one such occasion she and the defendant argued, and the defendant stated that he wished Bernard dead, or that her baby be born with mental retardation. Bernard, in turn, insulted the defendant. Eventually, the argument ceased and the defendant helped Bernard move.
Within a few days after moving out, Bernard, believing the defendant had no place to stay, asked her mother if the defendant could move in with them. The defendant was permitted to move in for one week, during which he and Bernard shared a bedroom. For the next several days the relationship between Bernard and the defendant was generally good.
On Saturday, July 21, 2005, Bernard and the defendant were arguing in the bedroom they shared. At some point during the argument, the defendant went downstairs to the kitchen and retrieved a hammer. He then returned upstairs and beat Bernard to death. A later autopsy revealed more than twenty blows to Bernard's head and face, which fractured her skull, as well as other blows to her chest, arms, hand and stomach.
After killing Bernard, the defendant left the house, passing Bernard's stepfather on the way. He noticed nothing out of the ordinary except that the defendant appeared to be in a hurry and that he drove off in Bernard's car, even though he did not have a driver's license. The defendant drove to his sister's home, where he changed his shoes and left his boots behind. He then drove off in his sister's truck. When the defendant's sister discovered her truck missing, she called the police. She also called Bernard's mother, who, after their conversation, went to the defendant's sister's home.
When the police arrived at the defendant's sister's home, Bernard's mother told them that she believed Bernard might be in trouble. The officers inspected the defendant's boots and discovered blood on them. Other officers were dispatched to Bernard's mother's home where Bernard's body was discovered at the foot of her bed. The hammer was eventually found hidden beneath the sink under a bag and a box of cleaning supplies. A blood-stained t-shirt was found at the bottom of a laundry bag.
After taking his sister's truck, the defendant drove to his mother's home in Newark, New Jersey. When he arrived he was met in the yard by his aunt, who asked him why he had killed Bernard. The defendant replied that he had "no regrets." The defendant's brother, a Newark police officer, was in the house and called the police upon the defendant's arrival. Shortly thereafter, Newark police arrived and arrested the defendant.
On July 23, 2005, two officers from the Manchester Police Department traveled to Newark to interview the defendant. The defendant waived his Miranda rights, see Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), and confessed to the officers. In October 2005, the defendant was indicted on one count of first degree murder. At trial, the defendant admitted that he had murdered Bernard, but argued that he acted impulsively and not with premeditation and deliberation. The defendant was convicted of first degree murder. This appeal followed.
On appeal the defendant contends that the trial court erred by permitting the State to introduce an inculpatory statement made at his mother's home, while excluding an exculpatory statement also made there, and by permitting the State to introduce evidence that he did not cry during his interview with New Hampshire police officers, while excluding evidence that he cried during an interview with New Jersey police officers. Additionally, the defendant contends that it was plain error for the trial court to allow the State, while cross-examining him, to ask him whether other witnesses had lied to the jury. We address each argument in turn.
Upon arriving at his mother's home, the defendant's aunt asked him why he had killed Bernard, and he stated, The defendant's mother was not present when this statement was made, but arrived shortly thereafter. After the defendant had been arrested and was being escorted to a police cruiser, the defendant's mother asked him why he had killed Bernard, and he stated that he had "snapped." The defendant's aunt and brother overheard the statements made to his mother. At trial, the defendant sought to admit testimony from his aunt and brother about his statement to his mother, but the trial court excluded the testimony as inadmissible hearsay. The defendant argues that testimony about his statement to his mother should have been admitted under the doctrine of verbal completeness.
The admissibility of evidence is generally within the trial court's sound discretion and we will not reverse the trial court's admission of evidence absent an unsustainable exercise of discretion. State v. Ellsworth, 151 N.H. 152, 159, 855 A.2d 474 (2004). To show that the trial court's exercise of discretion is unsustainable, the defendant must show that the decision was clearly unreasonable to the prejudice of his case. Id.
Under the doctrine of verbal completeness, a party has the right to introduce the remainder of a writing, statement, correspondence, former testimony or conversation that his or her opponent introduced so far as it relates to the same subject matter and hence tends to explain or shed light on the meaning of the part already received. This doctrine exists to prevent one party from gaining an advantage by misleading the jury. Thus, there are two requirements to trigger the doctrine respecting conversations: first, the statements must be part of the same conversation; and second, admission of only a portion would mislead the jury.
Id. (citations and quotations omitted).
The trial court found that the defendant's initial statement to his aunt and his later statement to his mother were not part of the same conversation. Therefore, the trial court permitted the defendant's aunt to testify about the defendant's first statement to her, but did not permit the defendant's aunt or brother to testify about the later statement to the defendant's mother. We agree that the statements were not part of the same conversation. The defendant's initial statements to his aunt were made immediately upon his arrival at his mother's home, when his mother was not present. The allegedly exculpatory statements to his mother were made sometime later, after she arrived, and after the defendant had been arrested. The statements simply were not part of the same conversation. Moreover, we conclude that the defendant's later statements, like those in State v. Douthart, 146 N.H. 445, 449, 772 A.2d 1289 (2001), "would not help explain the initial statements because they took place under entirely different circumstances after the defendant had been arrested and charged with murder in the interim, and because the statements are self-serving." Therefore, we conclude that the trial court did not unsustainably exercise its discretion in excluding the later statements.
The defendant next contends that the trial court erred in precluding evidence that he cried during one police interview while admitting evidence of another interview in which he did not cry. After the defendant was arrested, he was interviewed by two New Jersey police officers. During this interview, the defendant was allegedly very emotional and began crying. The trial court prevented the defendant from offering evidence about his demeanor or emotional state during this interview. The trial court did, however, permit him to offer evidence that he had been remorseful.
One day after his interview with New Jersey police, the defendant was interviewed by two New Hampshire police officers. During trial, a videotape of the defendant's interview with the New Hampshire officers was shown to the jury....
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