State v. Nick R.

• Decision Date: 28 September 2009
• Docket Number: No. 30,657.,30,657.
• Citation: 218 P.3d 868,2009 NMSC 050
• Parties: STATE of New Mexico, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. NICK R., a child, Defendant-Petitioner.
• Court: New Mexico Supreme Court

218 P.3d 868

2009 NMSC 050

STATE of New Mexico, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. NICK R., a child, Defendant-Petitioner.

No. 30,657.

Supreme Court of New Mexico.

September 28, 2009.

Hugh W. Dangler, Chief Public Defender, Nancy M. Hewitt, Appellate Defender, J.K. Theodosia Johnson, Assistant Public Defender, Santa Fe, NM, for Petitioner.

Gary King, Attorney General, Andrew S. Montgomery, Assistant Attorney General, Santa Fe, NM, for Respondent.

OPINION

DANIELS, Justice.

{1} Petitioner Nick R., a sixteen-year-old student at Taos High School, was charged in Children's Court with possessing a deadly weapon on school premises, in violation of NMSA 1978, Section 30-7-2.1 (1994). The issue before us is whether the Legislature intended to make an ordinary pocketknife a per se deadly weapon in the Criminal Code's statutory definitions, without regard to either its actual use or a person's purpose for carrying it, and thereby preclude any right to a jury determination of its status as a deadly weapon in the circumstances of a particular case.

{2} Although Section 30-7-2.1 does not refer to a pocketknife or define the term "deadly weapon" in any other way, NMSA 1978, Section 30-1-12(B) (1963) provides that, "[a]s used in the Criminal Code":

"deadly weapon" means any firearm, whether loaded or unloaded; or any weapon which is capable of producing death or great bodily harm, including but not restricted to any types of daggers, brass knuckles, switchblade knives, bowie knives, poniards, butcher knives, dirk knives and all such weapons with which dangerous cuts can be given, or with which dangerous thrusts can be inflicted, including swordcanes, and any kind of sharp pointed canes, also slingshots, slung shots, bludgeons; or any other weapons with which dangerous wounds can be inflicted[.]

{3} The Court of Appeals affirmed rulings of the Children's Court that Petitioner was not entitled to have a jury decide whether he had the intent to possess a pocketknife as a weapon. State v. Nick R., No. 27,145, slip op. at 2 (N.M.Ct.App. Aug. 30, 2007). Our review of the definitional statute's language, its history, its purposes, its relationship with other statutes, and over one hundred years of New Mexico case law leads us to the opposite conclusion. We therefore reverse the contrary rulings of the lower courts.

I. FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS BELOW

{4} The relevant facts were stipulated by the parties. Petitioner Nick R. worked after school hours for his father at a furniture store. His father supplied all store employees, including Nick, with pocketknives for opening boxes at work. One day in his math class, Nick felt something in his pocket and pulled it out to look at it. It was the pocketknife he had been using at work the evening before when he had been wearing the same pair of pants. His math teacher spotted him "messing around" with the unopened pocketknife underneath his school desk, confiscated it, and turned it over to school authorities. Nothing in the record indicates that the pocketknife was ever used or intended to be used as a weapon.

{5} Nick was suspended from school pending an administrative investigation, but he was reinstated after the superintendent of schools determined that he had not intentionally brought the pocketknife onto campus. Three months later, the State filed a delinquency petition in Children's Court, charging that Nick had committed a delinquent act under the Children's Code, on the theory that he had committed an offense that would have been a fourth-degree felony if committed by an adult.

{6} Before trial, the State filed two motions in limine relevant to this appeal, both of which were heard as preliminary matters on the day the parties appeared for the scheduled jury trial. The first, "State's Motion in Limine for Legal Determination that the Knife Is a Deadly Weapon," included as an exhibit a photograph of the pocketknife taken from Nick. The motion sought to have the court rule as a matter of law that the depicted item fit the statutory definition of "deadly weapon" under Section 30-1-12(B) and rule that the jury could not be allowed to make that determination. In granting the motion and taking the issue from the jury, the court rejected defense counsel's argument that the jury should determine whether the statutory deadly weapon definition had been met, based on the nature of the object and its manner of actual or intended use in the circumstances.

{7} A related motion was the "State's Motion in Limine to Exclude Any Reference to a Use Requirement," which argued that not only should the court make a pretrial determination that the particular pocketknife was per se a deadly weapon under the statute, but that defense counsel should be prohibited from making any argument to the jury regarding Nick's actual or intended use of the pocketknife. In granting the State's motions, the Children's Court judge commented from the bench:

So, it's not the intended use of the instrument, it's just the fact that you have it and you shouldn't. Simple as that. So, I don't think the use of it or the intended use has any bearing in this case. He either had it on him or carried it on school grounds or he didn't. I don't know what else — that's what the jury's got to hear.

They can't hear that he didn't intend to use it, he wasn't going to use it, because everybody could argue that, whether they intend to or not.

{8} Following the court's rulings on the motions in limine, defense counsel moved that the issues be certified for an interlocutory appeal, given the fact that there were no other triable issues to submit to the jury. The court denied the request. The parties then conferred and arrived at a conditional plea agreement that preserved Petitioner's right to appellate review of the pretrial rulings in limine.

{9} In an unpublished memorandum opinion, the Court of Appeals affirmed the Children's Court rulings, holding that simple possession of a pocketknife on school premises constitutes criminal possession of a deadly weapon as a matter of law, regardless of the possessor's actual or intended use. Nick R., No. 27,145, slip op. at 2-3.

{10} The case comes before us on certiorari to review the Court of Appeals' conclusion that "[b]ecause Child was carrying a knife, which is defined as a deadly weapon, there is no requirement that the State show that he intended to use it as a weapon." Id. at 3.

II. STANDARD OF REVIEW

{11} Statutory construction is a matter of law we review de novo. State v. Rivera, 2004-NMSC-001, ¶ 9, 134 N.M. 768, 82 P.3d 939. Our primary goal is to ascertain and give effect to the intent of the Legislature. State v. Davis, 2003-NMSC-022, ¶ 6, 134 N.M. 172, 74 P.3d 1064. In doing so, "we examine the plain language of the statute as well as the context in which it was promulgated, including the history of the statute and the object and purpose the Legislature sought to accomplish." Maes v. Audubon Indem. Ins. Group, 2007-NMSC-046, ¶ 11, 142 N.M. 235, 164 P.3d 934; see Hovet v. Allstate Ins. Co., 2004-NMSC-010, ¶ 10, 135 N.M. 397, 89 P.3d 69. We must take care to avoid adoption of a construction that would "render the statute's application absurd or unreasonable" or "lead to injustice or contradiction." N.M. State Bd. of Educ. v. Bd. of Educ., 95 N.M. 588, 591, 624 P.2d 530, 533 (1981).

III. DISCUSSION

{12} Article 7 of the New Mexico Criminal Code, "Weapons and Explosives," contains several statutes imposing criminal sanctions for unlawfully carrying deadly weapons. Section 30-7-1, provides with respect to all those statutes that "`[c]arrying a deadly weapon' means being armed with a deadly weapon ... or in close proximity thereto, so that the weapon is readily accessible for use." NMSA 1978, § 30-7-1 (1963); see State v. Salazar, 1997-NMCA-043, ¶¶ 8, 10, 123 N.M. 347, 940 P.2d 195 (holding that the term "carrying" does not have a broader meaning in connection with carrying a weapon on school grounds; whether the defendant was carrying a deadly weapon was a factual determination to be made by a jury in school ground cases, in the same manner as in prosecutions under other statutes criminalizing the carrying of a deadly weapon).

{13} The basic crime of unlawful carrying of a deadly weapon is contained in NMSA 1978, Section 30-7-2(A) (2001), which imposes a petty misdemeanor criminal penalty of up to six months in jail, and NMSA 1978, § 31-19-1(B) (1984), for carrying "a concealed loaded firearm or any other type of deadly weapon anywhere, except" in one's automobile for personal protection, on one's real property, with a concealed firearms permit, or by a peace officer.

{14} In addition to this generally applicable weapons-carrying crime, Article 7 also contains statutes providing heightened criminal penalties for carrying deadly weapons in particular contexts, such as authorizing a full misdemeanor jail sentence of up to a year, NMSA 1978, § 31-19-1(A) (1984), for carrying any deadly weapon on a bus, NMSA 1978, § 30-7-13 (1979), and a felony prison sentence of up to eighteen months for carrying any deadly weapon on school grounds, § 30-7-2.1, the criminal charge involved in this case. See NMSA 1978, § 31-18-15(A)(10) (2005, prior to 2007 amendment).

{15} Although neither Section 30-7-2.1 nor any other statute in Article 7 contains any further definition of what is meant by the recurring term "deadly weapon," the courts below and the parties have recognized that the definition applicable to those statutes is contained in Section 30-1-12(B), the Criminal Code's uniform definition of the term, applicable to a broad range of offenses involving both use and possession of deadly weapons. See State v. Traeger, 2001-NMSC-022, ¶ 10, 130 N.M. 618, 29 P.3d 518 (interpreting Section 30-1-12(B) in the context of a charge of aggravated battery with a baseball bat as a deadly weapon); State v. Fernandez, 2007-NMCA-091, ¶¶ 6, 8-9, 142 N.M. 231, 164 P.3d 112 (interpreting Section 30-1-12(B) in...