State v. Ochoa
| Decision Date | 16 January 2020 |
| Docket Number | NO. S-1-SC-37092,S-1-SC-37092 |
| Parties | STATE OF NEW MEXICO, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. JOHN ERIC OCHOA, Defendant-Petitioner. |
| Court | New Mexico Supreme Court |
This decision of the Supreme Court of New Mexico was not selected for publication in the New Mexico Appellate Reports. Refer to Rule 12-405 NMRA for restrictions on the citation of unpublished decisions. Electronic decisions may contain computer-generated errors or other deviations from the official version filed by the Supreme Court.
Conrad F. Perea, District Judge
Bennett J. Baur, Chief Public Defender
Nina Lalevic, Assistant Appellate Defender
Santa Fe, NM
for Petitioner
Hector H. Balderas, Attorney General
John Kloss, Assistant Attorney General
for Respondent
{1} Defendant John Eric Ochoa was convicted of two counts of criminal sexual contact of a minor (CSCM), contrary to NMSA 1978, Section 30-9-13 (2003), and one count of interference with communications, contrary to NMSA 1978, Section 30-12-1 (1979). He previously appealed his convictions, and the Court of Appeals reversed on speedy trial grounds. State v. Ochoa, 2014-NMCA-065, ¶ 1, 327 P.3d 1102. This Court, however, reversed the Court of Appeals and reinstated Defendant's convictions. State v. Ochoa, 2017-NMSC-031, ¶ 67, 406 P.3d 505. Defendant filed a motion to recall mandate for the Court of Appeals to address the remaining issues in his appeal, which the Court of Appeals granted. State v. Ochoa, A-1-CA-31243, mem. op. ¶ 1 (May 9, 2018). The Court of Appeals affirmed Defendant's convictions in a memorandum opinion, id. ¶ 44, and this appeal followed.
{2} We granted certiorari to review one of several issues raised on appeal by Defendant.1 The lone issue for our consideration pertains to the district court's admission and exclusion of expert testimony at Defendant's trial. This single issue can be broken down into the following three sub-issues:
{3} We affirm the district court's decisions (1) to exclude Defendant's proposed expert witness, (2) to deny Defendant's request for a continuance to find a replacement expert, and (3) to admit the State's expert witness. Although the Court of Appeals also affirmed the district court's rulings on these sub-issues, it erroneously considered the testimony of the State's expert to be lay witness testimony. See Ochoa, A-1-CA-31243, mem. op. ¶ 11. We conclude—and both parties in this appeal agree—that the State's expert offered expert testimony, as defined in Rule 11-702 NMRA.
{4} Because the factual allegations underlying Defendant's convictions are not material to the parties' arguments in this appeal, we will not discuss them at length here. For context, however, four of Defendant's children (J.D., I.O, K.O, and E.O.) testified at trial about various sexual contacts that Defendant had with each of them. Defendant was convicted of CSCM only for his contacts with his daughter, E.O., who did not live with him but would visit him on some weekends. E.O. testified about multiple instances in which Defendant hugged her and placed his hand inside her underwear, and one instance in which he kissed her and it was a "long kiss." Defendant testified in his own defense and denied that he "engage[d] in sexual activity with any of [his] children."
{5} Detective Irma Palos and Detective Kacee Thatcher of the Las Cruces Police Department conducted safehouse interviews of J.D., I.O, K.O., and E.O. regarding the allegations they made against Defendant. The detectives conducted the safehouseinterviews of the four children by utilizing the CornerHouse safehouse interview technique. Palos, who was employed by the Las Cruces Police Department for eleven years and had served as a detective for four years, was the in Defendant's case and testified at trial.
{6} Defendant argues that the district court abused its discretion in excluding the testimony of his proposed expert witness, a forensic psychologist, who was prepared to critique the CornerHouse technique. For the following reasons, we conclude that the district court's exclusion of Defendant's proposed expert was not an abuse of discretion.
{7} Defendant intended to offer the expert testimony of Dr. Alexander Paret at trial to provide his opinion that the interviews of Defendant's children were improperly administered and, as a consequence, led to suggestible interviews. In Defendant's motion to allow expert testimony, he stated that Dr. Paret would testify about "examples and errors committed in the original [safehouse] interviews" and "[c]orrect [safehouse] interview techniques." The district court held a hearing on May 5, 2010—twelve days before trial—on the admissibility of Dr. Paret's expert testimony. At the hearing, defense counsel argued that "improper safehouse interviewing" was "the origin of some of the children's testimony" against Defendant, and that at trial, Dr. Paret would opine "as to the proper way to do safehouse interviews and how these interviews were done incorrectly."
{8} Dr. Paret testified about his background, education, and experience at the May 5, 2010 hearing. Dr. Paret stated that he double-majored in biology and chemistry, received his master's degree in counseling psychology, and received his Ph.D. in clinical and forensic psychology. He testified that his current employment involved evaluating criminal defendants' competency to stand trial, amenability to treatment, and dangerousness, and that he had been qualified as an expert witness in New Mexico courts to testify about these issues. Dr. Paret previously worked for four years at a program designed to help children who had been sexually abused. In those four years, which coincided with his schooling to obtain his master's degree, Dr. Paret received extensive training in the "cognitive interview technique" for interviews of children. Using this technique, he conducted approximately 400 interviews of children who had alleged they were sexually abused. Although Dr. Paret left this program in 2002—eight years before Defendant's trial—and no longer interviewed children who alleged they were abused, he testified that he retained his expertise by reading publications on the cognitive interview technique and keeping in contact with his former colleagues.
{9} Notably, however, the cognitive interview technique was not the technique used for the safehouse interviews of Defendant's children. Detective Palos and Detective Thatcher used a different interview technique, the CornerHouse technique, in theirsafehouse interviews. Dr. Paret acknowledged the differences between the two techniques at the May 5, 2010 hearing, and testified that he had never conducted an interview using the CornerHouse technique or offered testimony on the technique. Although neither party extensively explored the differences between the two techniques during the May 5, 2010 hearing, Dr. Paret testified that interviews using the CornerHouse technique have four or five additional "steps" that are not part of the cognitive interview technique. Dr. Paret had never been trained as a safehouse interviewer to use the CornerHouse technique, and he never conducted research or published a paper on the CornerHouse technique (or safehouse techniques more generally). In addition, his analysis of the interviews in this case was from the perspective of the cognitive interview technique, rather than the perspective of the CornerHouse technique actually used.
{10} The district court found that Dr. Paret was "not qualified as an expert in the field of [s]afehouse protocol and techniques" and excluded him from presenting expert testimony at trial. The district court stated that Dr. Paret was "highly qualified" to testify about the focus areas of his current employment, such as competency to stand trial and evaluations of dangerousness, but he was "not qualified to critique a safehouse interview technique with which he is unfamiliar and has never studied nor employed." The district court specifically noted that Dr. Paret had not conducted any type of safehouse interview with a child in eight years and concluded that the particular safehouse interviews conducted were "not a subject of his expertise for him to critique."
{11} We will not reverse absent a showing that the district court abused its discretion. State v. Alberico, 1993-NMSC-047, ¶ 58, 116 N.M. 156, 861 P.2d 192; see also Loper v. JMAR, 2013-NMCA-098, ¶ 18, 311 P.3d 1184 (); State v. Downey, 2008-NMSC-061, ¶ 26, 145 N.M. 232, 195 P.3d 1244 (); Shamalon Bird Farm, Ltd. v. United States Fid. & Guar. Co., 1991-NMSC-039, ¶ 6, 111 N.M. 713, 809 P.2d 627 (). "Broad discretion in the admission or exclusion of expert evidence will be sustained unless manifestly erroneous." Alberico, 1993-NMSC-047, ¶ 58 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). "When there exist reasons both supporting and detracting from a trial court decision, there is no abuse of discretion." State...
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