State v. Reyes
| Decision Date | 24 July 2002 |
| Docket Number | No. 26,304.,26,304. |
| Citation | 132 N.M. 576,52 P.3d 948,2002 NMSC 24 |
| Parties | STATE of New Mexico, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Valentin REYES, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | New Mexico Supreme Court |
Law Office of Nancy L. Simmons, P.C., Nancy L. Simmons, Albuquerque, NM, for Appellant.
Patricia A. Madrid, Attorney General, Elizabeth Blaisdell, Assistant Attorney General, Santa Fe, NM, for Appellee.
{1} Following a jury trial, Defendant Valentin Reyes was convicted in the deaths of three men of the following crimes: three counts of first degree murder by willful, deliberate, and premeditated murder, contrary to NMSA 1978, § 30-2-1(A)(1) (1994); three counts of felony murder contrary to Section 30-2-1(A)(2); conspiracy to commit murder contrary to NMSA 1978, § 30-28-2 (1979) and Section 30-2-1(A); one count of kidnapping with great bodily harm contrary to NMSA 1978, § 30-4-1 (1995); conspiracy to commit kidnapping contrary to Section 30-28-2 and Section 30-4-1; two counts of false imprisonment contrary to NMSA 1978, § 30-4-3 (1963); one count of armed robbery contrary to NMSA 1978, § 30-16-2 (1973); conspiracy to commit armed robbery contrary to Section 30-28-2 and Section 30-16-2; three counts of tampering with evidence contrary to NMSA 1978, § 30-22-5 (1963); unlawful taking of a vehicle contrary to NMSA 1978, § 66-3-504 (1998); and receiving a stolen vehicle contrary to NMSA 1978, § 66-3-505 (1978). This Court has jurisdiction under Rule 12-102(A)(1) NMRA 2002 ().
{2} On appeal, Defendant asserts that the following errors occurred at trial: (1) multiple convictions for overlapping or contradictory charges violated his double jeopardy and due process protections; (2) the trial court erred in various evidentiary rulings; (3) the kidnapping jury instruction was incorrect; (4) there was insufficient evidence to support the jury's verdict; and (5) his trial counsel was ineffective. We affirm all convictions except, under the facts of this case, the conviction for receiving a stolen vehicle.
{3} On February 25, 1997, the bodies of two men were found in a motel room in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Both men were strangled to death; they had been bound and one of them had been severely beaten. The man who had rented the room the night before was not found in the room. His body was not found until March 12, 1997, when a state highway employee spotted the body in a ravine at the bottom of a steep embankment along Interstate 25, north of Santa Fe, New Mexico. This third victim had also been killed by strangulation; he was gagged and also bound hand and foot in a manner similar to the victims in the motel room. His body had been wrapped in a bedspread from the motel. The key to the motel room was found in his pocket, and the one shoe he was wearing was the mate to a shoe recovered from the motel room. According to the testimony at trial, the three victims, who were friends, had planned to meet four Mexican men at the motel that night for a sexual encounter.
{4} On March 3, 1997, four Mexican nationals were arrested in Salina, Kansas, driving a 1987 Ford Taurus that had belonged to one of the victims. The four men were Defendant, Ricardo Martinez-Rodriguez, Ricardo Martinez-Silva, and Rene Hernandez-Hernandez. The Kansas authorities contacted the police in Albuquerque, and a team of officers went to Kansas to interview the four men. Before being interviewed by the officers, Defendant was advised of his Miranda rights and signed a waiver of rights form. During the interview, he denied having been in Albuquerque and said that the four men bought the car in Denver where they had been doing cleaning jobs.
{5} The Kansas authorities kept the four co-defendants1 separated. On the second day of custody, jail officials found a note, signed by Defendant, concealed in a pair of shoes belonging to one of the co-defendants. In the note, Defendant told the others that they had to develop a consistent cover story for their activities, acknowledged that they may be facing some time in prison, and also stated that "all 4 of us are equally guilty[,] no one more and no one less."
{6} While the four men were in custody in Kansas, one of the co-defendants talked to another prisoner, Efraim Porras, who was in jail on a federal drug charge. On March 3, 1997, this co-defendant told Porras that he and the others were in jail for having killed two people in Albuquerque. He also disclosed to Porras that there were actually three victims; the third had been thrown into the snow and had yet to be found. The co-defendant also told him that the three victims had been strangled to death. Porras told his attorney about the conversation who reported it to the authorities.
{7} Testimony at trial by the investigating officers revealed that Defendant's palm print was on the wall of the motel room. Two pairs of blood-stained canvas gloves were found in the bathroom. The forensic scientist who conducted a DNA analysis on the gloves testified that the blood of the owner of the car was on the outside of all four gloves. The victim who owned the car also suffered blunt trauma from injuries to the head and neck. The results of DNA testing of the inside of one of the gloves did not exclude Defendant as a donor. The DNA evidence developed from the semen found on the anal swabs taken from the body of the third victim matched that of one of the co-defendants. A friend of Defendant's, Karmen Grover, testified that Defendant had been accompanied by three other Hispanic men when they visited her in Salt Lake City late in the evening of February 25, 1997. She also stated that the car they were driving had New Mexico license plates.
{8} Defendant admitted at trial that he was present at the motel room with the victims on the night of the murder. Defendant testified that when he left the motel room the three victims were still alive, and that he had no role in their deaths, in hiding evidence, or in stealing the car. Although he had been in the car, he testified that he was unaware that the body of the third victim had been thrown from the car north of Santa Fe. He explained that the statement in his note about all of them being equally guilty referred to some petty thievery the group had engaged in during their travels. After a jury trial, Defendant was convicted of all charges.
{9} Defendant asserts that overcharging of offenses led the trial court to err when it accepted verdicts that resulted in multiple convictions for overlapping or contradictory charges. Under this claim, Defendant challenges his convictions for first degree murder, armed robbery, conspiracy, tampering with evidence, unlawful taking of a motor vehicle, and receiving a stolen vehicle.
{10} The State tried Defendant for first degree murder under two theories of first degree murder: murder by deliberate killing and murder in the commission of a felony. Jury instructions were given on the alternative bases for the first degree murder charge for each of the three victims. Instead of a general verdict form for first degree murder for each victim, separate verdict forms were given for each alternative. The jury found Defendant guilty of both alternatives for each count. Defendant claims that his convictions under both theories of first degree murder resulted from ambiguous jury instructions because the jury was not told that it could not convict him for both deliberate murder and felony murder. This failure, he contends, resulted in contradictory convictions, violating principles of due process and double jeopardy under the federal and state2 constitutions.
{11} We disagree with Defendant's claims for several reasons. We first note that, contrary to Defendant's assertions, the jury was instructed in the alternative on both theories of first degree murder. For example, in the jury instruction for the first victim, the instructions for felony murder included the following language: "For you to find the defendant Valentin Reyes guilty of Felony Murder, which is First Degree Murder, as charged in the alternative to Count I ...." Count I was the charge of first degree murder by deliberate killing. This language was repeated in each of the felony murder instructions for the other two victims.
{12} The jury was instructed on the elements of deliberate intent murder for each of the victims in accordance with UJI 14-201 NMRA 2002, as follows:
{13} The elements of the felony murder theory of first degree murder are contained in UJI 14-202 NMRA 2002. The jury was instructed on those elements as follows:
{14} Although Defendant contends that a guilty verdict for both of...
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