State v. Pierce

• Decision Date: 27 February 1990
• Docket Number: No. 17813,17813
• Parties: STATE of New Mexico, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Darci Kayleen PIERCE, Defendant-Appellant
• Court: New Mexico Supreme Court

Page 352

788 P.2d 352

109 N.M. 596

STATE of New Mexico, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Darci Kayleen PIERCE, Defendant-Appellant

No. 17813.

Supreme Court of New Mexico.

Feb. 27, 1990.

[109 N.M. 597] Jacquelyn Robins, Chief Public Defender and Bruce Rogoff, Asst. Appellate Defender, Santa Fe, for defendant-appellant.

Hal Stratton, Atty. Gen. and Katherine Zinn, Asst. Atty. Gen., Santa Fe, for plaintiff-appellee.

OPINION

SOSA, Chief Justice.

Defendant-appellant, Darci Pierce, was found guilty but mentally ill of first-degree murder, kidnapping and child abuse. The crimes were committed on July 23, 1987. Appellant was sentenced to life imprisonment for first-degree murder, eighteen years for kidnapping, and eighteen months for child abuse. The sentences were to run concurrently. Our statutes pertaining to a verdict of guilty but mentally ill and sentencing thereon are, respectively, NMSA 1978, Sections 31-9-3 and 31-9-4 (Repl.Pamp.1984).

The record shows that Appellant is and has been for a long period of time a mentally unstable person. Prior to the crimes for which she was convicted, she told various persons, including her husband and doctors, that she was pregnant, when in fact she was not. During the months preceding the crimes, she became increasingly obsessed with the desire to have a baby. She kidnapped the victim, who was a pregnant woman near her date of delivery. Appellant took the victim to a remote spot, strangled her in successive stages in order to keep her alive but unconscious, while Appellant performed a crude cesarean section delivery on the victim. Appellant then took the newborn infant from the victim's body, leaving the victim to bleed to death. Appellant at first claimed the baby as her own, then, that of a surrogate mother, but eventually confessed to police what she had done and led them to the scene of the murder.

Appellant raises five points of error on appeal: (1) that a prospective juror concealed material facts during interrogation on voir dire and that the court erred in not granting a new trial on this issue following proper defense motion; (2) that the court's instructing the jury on felony murder deprived Appellant of due process and a fair trial in that it lessened the degree of mens rea required to be shown by the State on the separate charge of first degree murder; (3) that the court's instruction on a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity violated due process by improperly shifting the burden of proof on this question to Appellant; (4) that the court erroneously modified a uniform jury instruction pertaining to the definition of "mentally ill" and failed to track the language of Section 31-9-3 when instructing the jury on a verdict of guilty but mentally ill; (5) that the prosecutor's questioning of an expert defense witness on her having testified for the defense in another murder trial denied Appellant due process and a fair trial. We address each of these issues in turn.

I. THE JUROR'S ALLEGED CONCEALMENT OF A MATERIAL FACT AND THE COURT'S DENIAL OF THE DEFENSE MOTION FOR A NEW TRIAL.

The colloquy between the court and the juror on voir dire proceeded as follows:

Court: [H]ave you ever had to be treated by a psychiatrist or psychologist for any reason?

Juror: Not that I remember, your Honor. Not that I can remember * * * [A]t one time, I had * * * kind of a dizzy spell, and they thought that I needed a psychiatrist, and finally a doctor got ahold of me and took care of me. So I didn't have to have a psychiatrist.

The day after the verdict was returned, the juror was quoted in a newspaper as saying:

I was mentally sick--It caused me to go berserk at 12 or 13. I had to go to a hospital for a year. That's why it was so easy to judge her case. I've seen people who were 10 times worse than she was go into mental hospitals and be cured.

Based on this statement, Appellant filed a motion for a new trial. At the hearing on the motion, the juror testified that his father had hit him with a board when he was young, and that this traumatic event caused him to be unable to talk and resulted in his being hospitalized for depression. When asked if the person who helped treat him in the hospital had been a psychiatrist or psychologist, the juror responded, "No, no, no, because they was not dealing with my mind. They was dealing with my speech because I knew what was wrong."

He stated further that it was not medical treatment that healed him, but a "beautiful experience" in which "the Lord Jesus Christ, the living God, healed me. That is the experience that I have received." He denied having told the newspaper reporter that he had once been mentally sick or that he had gone berserk. He further testified that he could see the devil in the Appellant. He continued, "I saw in her right away, I saw in her witchcraft. I saw in her rebellious. I saw in her murder * * * I saw in her all these things because I am a spiritual man." The juror continued to maintain that he had never been treated by a psychiatrist, that he had not falsely answered any question put to him by the court on voir dire, and that he had made his decision on the verdict based on the evidence presented at trial.

At the conclusion of the hearing, the court denied the motion for new trial, stating the following:

The Court will find that the Defense has failed to establish, to the satisfaction of the Court, that there were any material misrepresentations, misrepresentations or false statements of fact in the Voir Dire Examination. Also, that the Defendant's [sic] have failed to establish to the Court's satisfaction that actual prejudice has been shown by [the juror's] having been seated as a juror. The Court might just comment that he may not be the type of juror that most of us would want sitting on our cases, but that also is questionable. It could have been that the Defense might have rather had persons who had undergone psychiatric treatment or had mental illnesses, and they may have been more favorable to the Defendant's situation, as opposed to persons who had not experienced that type of illness themselves or in their families.

Also, the Court might just comment that I can easily understand how there may have been misunderstandings between what [the juror] said to the reporter and how the reporter understood them. It's difficult to follow [the juror] here as to how he testified and what he really meant. And it took a lot of explanation, and I am not sure that any of us still really understand and comprehend just what he is trying to say in all respects. According to [the juror's] testimony, as far as he's concerned, he never was treated by a psychiatrist or psychologist.

The standard for review of this issue is based on two cases, each involved with the same defendant and the same set of facts. State v. Baca, 99 N.M. 754, 664 P.2d 360 (1983), and Baca v. Sullivan 821 F.2d 1480 (10th Cir.1987). After we affirmed the conviction in State v. Baca, the defendant petitioned in Baca v. Sullivan for a writ of habeas corpus to the United States District Court for the District of new Mexico. The petition was dismissed, and on appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, the dismissal was affirmed.

In State v. Baca, a juror falsely answered "no" to a jury questionnaire in which he was asked if any member of this family "past or present" had served in a law enforcement agency. In actuality, his brother had served over thirty years on the Albuquerque police force before retiring. The juror also checked "criminal" on the questionnaire when in fact he had previously served on a jury trying a civil suit. Finally, when the panel was asked on voir dire if anyone had a relative or close friend "who might work for a police department," the juror remained silent, presumably because the question was phrased in the present tense and did not require him to answer.

As in the case before us, in State v. Baca, when the juror's inaccurate responses came to light, the defendant sought a new trial. In denying the motion for new trial, the trial court found that the juror's false answer to the question about his brother's service on the police force was not relevant to the juror's ability to serve as an impartial juror. In reviewing the record in that case we held there were not "such relevant and material facts present in the case that might bear on possible disqualification of the juror, so that it could be asserted that the defendant's trial was conducted in an atmosphere of bias or partiality." Id., at 756, 664 P.2d at 362. In reviewing the trial court's hearing of the motion for new trial, we held, "Where there is nothing to indicate either manifest error or abuse of discretion by the trial court, in permitting [the juror] to serve as a juror, the trial court's decision will not be disturbed on appeal. The burden of establishing partiality is upon the party making such a claim." Id. (citations omitted).

In its review of the case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit focused both on the irrelevance of the juror's answer to his service as an impartial juror and the failure of the defendant to show actual prejudice. Similar to the appellant's position at oral argument in the case at bar, the defendant in Baca v. Sullivan argued before the Court of Appeals that the juror's false answer deprived the defendant of a peremptory challenge. The Court of Appeals rejected that argument, relying on McDonough Power Equipment, Inc. v. Greenwood, 464 U.S. 548, 555, 104 S.Ct. 845, 849, 78 L.Ed.2d 663 (1984). In McDonough, the Supreme Court held both that a challanged juror must be shown to have answered dishonestly a material question on voir dire, and that had the juror given a correct response, the answer would have been grounds for a challenge for cause. Finally, the Court of Appeals relied on United States v. Perkins, 748 F.2d 1519, 1532 (11th Cir.1984), as support for the proposition that " '[a]...