Justia Constitutional Law Opinion Summaries

Articles Posted in New Mexico Supreme Court
by
Defendant Albert Fernandez appealed his conviction for battery upon a peace officer. The New Mexico Supreme Court granted Defendant’s petition for certiorari review to determine whether: (1) the district court incorrectly admitted Defendant’s prior conviction for battery upon a peace officer; (2) cumulative error deprived Defendant of a fair trial; and (3) the Court of Appeals improperly decided Defendant’s appeal without considering his reconstructed testimony. After such review, the Supreme Court found that the district court abused its discretion in admitting Defendant’s prior conviction for battery upon a peace officer. The Court therefore reversed the Court of Appeals and remanded for a new trial. In light of its reversal, the Supreme Court concluded it was unnecessary to address the merits of Defendant’s claim of cumulative error. Finally, the Court concluded Defendant’s request to supplement the record with his reconstructed testimony was resolved by the Court of Appeals and was therefore moot. View "New Mexico v. Fernandez" on Justia Law

by
In 2007, two bills addressing the monitoring and parole of convicted sex offenders passed within days of each other and were signed into law on the same day. Defendant Anthony Sena, who pleaded no contest to the offense of child solicitation by electronic communication device, asked the New Mexico Supreme Court to hold these laws irreconcilable. Consequently, he sought application of the preexisting standard parole term to his sentence and not the extended parole term enacted in the 2007 legislation. To this, the Court disagreed that the bills were irreconcilable and concluded that the extended parole term applied to those convicted of this crime. In this opinion, the Court reaffirmed that its role was to read statutes harmoniously if possible and that the proper test for a court to apply when reconciling legislation and discerning legislative intent in these circumstances was that of New Mexico v. Smith, 98 P.3d 1022. The Court of Appeals opinion was reversed and the Court affirmed the district court’s imposition of the extended parole term on Defendant’s crime. View "New Mexico v. Sena" on Justia Law

by
Defendant-Appellee Derrick Romero pleaded guilty to second-degree criminal sexual penetration (CSP). In the first judgment and sentence, the district court erred in ordering that Appellee serve two years of parole, resulting in an unlawfully short period of mandatory parole. Thirteen days later, the district court ostensibly corrected the sentencing error by entering a second amended judgment, which replaced Appellee’s parole period of two years with five-to-twenty years. Both of these parole periods were illegal sentences, as NMSA 1978, Section 31-21-10.1(A)(2) (2007), required a sex offender convicted of CSP in the second degree to serve an “indeterminate period of supervised parole for . . . not less than five years and up to the natural life of the sex offender.” Appellee challenged the revised parole period of five-to-twenty years in an Amended Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus. The district court determined that it did not have jurisdiction to correct the illegal parole sentence in the first judgment and accordingly granted Appellee’s habeas petition, vacating the second amended judgment and reinstating the original two-year parole period. The State appealed the grant of habeas relief. The Supreme Court held that historical changes leading to Rule 5-801 (2009) (former Rule 5- 801) did not remove a district court’s common law jurisdictional authority to correct an illegal sentence. Thus, the Court overruled New Mexiso v. Torres, 272 P.3d 689 in that regard. Under this holding, the Court reversed the district court’s grant of the writ of habeas corpus and remanded to the district court to impose the statutorily required parole sentence. The Court further directed the Rules of Criminal Procedure for State Courts Committee to clarify the length of time in which a district court retains the relevant jurisdiction to correct an illegal sentence in accordance with the Court's opinion here. Finally, under Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U.S. 238 (1969), and Rule 5-303 NMRA, the Court held that Appellee was entitled to an opportunity for plea withdrawal. View "New Mexico v. Romero" on Justia Law

by
A constitutional amendment proposed by the Legislature and approved by the electorate in the 2020 general election made a number of changes governing the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission (Commission or PRC). Those changes included alterations to the selection, qualifications, and terms of Commission members, and revision to the PRC’s constitutionally assigned responsibilities. Petitioners were three nonprofit organizations who represented the rights of Native Americans. Petitioners asked the New Mexico Supreme Court to declare the ratification of the constitutional amendment a nullity and to issue a writ of mandamus directing Respondent Advisory Committee of the New Mexico Compilation Commission (Advisory Committee) to remove the amendment from the Constitution. The Advisory Committee responded that Petitioners’ challenge was untimely and improperly raised against the committee through a petition for writ of mandamus, but took no position on the merits. Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, who was granted leave to intervene in these proceedings, joined the Advisory Committee’s timeliness arguments and additionally argued that the amendment was constitutional. After hearing oral arguments, the Supreme Court denied the petition for writ of mandamus, holding that the petition was timely, but that the amendment did not violate Article XIX, Section 1 of the New Mexico Constitution. View "Indigenous Lifeways v. N.M. Compilation Comm'n Advisory Comm." on Justia Law

by
Defendant Christina Banghart-Portillo pleaded guilty to tampering with evidence, and conspiracy to commit tampering with evidence, contrary to (Count 1 and Count 2, respectively), each of which was a fourth-degree felony offense, under a written plea agreement. Because Defendant had a prior felony conviction, each sentence was enhanced at her initial sentencing by one year under New Mexico’s habitual offender statute. Defendant also admitted her identity in a second prior felony at the time of her sentencing, yet the district court imposed no additional enhancement at that time. The district court imposed consecutive sentences. The central issue this case presented for the New Mexico Supreme Court's review was whether Defendant had a reasonable expectation of finality for Count 1 such that the district court no longer had jurisdiction when it applied the habitual offender enhancement to that Count. Defendant argued on appeal that the district court’s enhancement of the Count 1 sentence resulted in a double jeopardy violation because the court had lost jurisdiction by the time of the enhancement. The Court of Appeals held that the district court retained jurisdiction to apply a habitual offender enhancement to Count 1. The Supreme Court concluded Defendant did not have a reasonable expectation of finality in Count 1 at the time that the district court enhanced Defendant’s sentence because the district court had previously informed her of the consequences she faced if she violated probation. Therefore, it affirmed the Court of Appeals and held that the district court properly retained jurisdiction to apply a habitual offender enhancement to Count 1. View "New Mexico v. Banghart-Portillo" on Justia Law

by
Eight named inmates and two nonprofit organizations (collectively, plaintiffs) filed an amended complaint in district court seeking a mixture of a classwide writ of habeas corpus and classwide injunctive and declaratory relief. Plaintiffs alleged that the State’s management of COVID-19 in New Mexico prisons violated inmates’ rights under the New Mexico Constitution. The district court dismissed the amended complaint, concluding that it lacked subject-matter jurisdiction because the individual inmate-plaintiffs failed to exhaust the internal grievance procedures of the New Mexico Corrections Department (NMCD) before seeking relief, as required by NMSA 1978, Section 33-2-11(B) (1990). Agreeing with the result, but not all of its reasoning, the New Mexico Supreme Court affirmed the district court: "to satisfy the habeas corpus exhaustion requirement under Rule 5-802(C) for an entire plaintiff class, one or more named class members must exhaust administrative remedies for each claim. Because no Named Plaintiff exhausted or sought to exhaust NMCD’s internal grievance procedures, we affirm." View "Anderson, et al. v. New Mexico" on Justia Law

by
On interlocutory appeal, the State challenged the Court of Appeals’ affirmance of the district court’s pretrial ruling that almost all statements made by Declarant Kimbro Talk to sexual assault nurse examiner (SANE) nurse Gail Starr were inadmissible as violating Defendant Oliver Tsosie’s confrontation rights under the Sixth Amendment. The district court concluded that Declarant’s statements sought by the State for use at Defendant’s trial were testimonial in nature, and thus inadmissible, pursuant to Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004) and Davis v. Washington, 547 U.S. 813 (2006). The New Mexico Supreme Court reversed and, without ruling on other considerations of admissibility, held that almost all of the excluded statements were nontestimonial in nature and thus did not violate Defendant’s rights under the Confrontation Clause. View "New Mexico v. Tsosie" on Justia Law

by
Child, then age seventeen, became Facebook friends with a former schoolmate, Jeremiah Erickson (Erickson), then age nineteen. The two conversed primarily through their respective Facebook Messenger accounts. Child and Erickson used Messenger to arrange in-person meetings, during which Erickson drove to Child’s house to pick her up and drive her somewhere to “hang out.” It was the second of these meetings that gave rise to the events leading to Child’s adjudication. Both Erickson and Child testified that their get-together on the night of February 24, 2020, did not end well, and each provided a different narrative as to what unfolded. At Child’s adjudication, the State sought to introduce evidence of communications between Child and Erickson the State alleged took place on Facebook Messenger the day after an incident involving Erickson’s vehicle. The State sought to authenticate the messages through Erickson’s testimony as to his personal knowledge of both the accuracy of screenshots and his history of Facebook Messenger communications with Child, as well as through the contents of the messages themselves. Child’s counsel objected to the authentication of the exhibits, arguing the screenshots did not show with certainty the messages were sent from Child’s Facebook account and emphasizing what counsel characterized as the inherent difficulty in “lay[ing a] foundation on Facebook Messenger messages because anybody can have access to somebody’s phone or Facebook account.” The district court overruled the objection, and the evidence was admitted. Child was subsequently adjudicated delinquent and appealed the district court’s judgment and disposition. The New Mexico Supreme Court agreed with the Court of Appeals that the traditional authentication standard set out in Rule 11-901 provided the appropriate legal framework for authenticating social media evidence. But the Court disagreed with appellate court's conclusion that the State failed to meet the threshold for authentication established under that rule, much less that the district court abused its discretion in finding the State had met its burden. The Supreme Court held the State’s authentication showing was sufficient under Rule 11-901 to support a finding that, more likely than not, the Facebook Messenger account used to send the messages belonged to Child and that Child was the author of the messages. Accordingly, the Court of Appeals was reversed and Child’s delinquency adjudications were reinstated. View "New Mexico v. Jesenya O." on Justia Law

by
Defendant-respondent Jesse Mascareno-Haidle was charged committing a series of burglaries of residential homes in Albuquerque. The State filed a motion for pretrial detention, and to support its motion, the State presented the investigating detective's criminal complaint-arrest warrant affidavit, the pretrial services public safety assessment (PSA) recommending that Defendant be released on his own recognizance, the results of a criminal history search pertaining to Defendant, and the register of actions in the case. At the hearing for the motion, "noticeably lacking" was any testimony from the detective and any argument that no conditions of release could protect the community from Defendant if he were released. The district court judge denied detention. The district court judge found “that the magnitude of the allegations are inherently dangerous” but “that the State has failed to prove by clear and convincing evidence that no release conditions will reasonably protect the safety of another person or the community.” The State filed a second motion for pretrial detention. As with the first motion, the State supported its second motion with the detective's second criminal complaint-arrest warrant affidavit, an updated pretrial services PSA that again recommended Defendant’s release on his own recognizance, the results of a criminal history search, and the register of actions in the case. An arrest warrant was issued, and Defendant was arrested at his home - his required location under the existing conditions of his release. At the conclusion of a second hearing on the State's motion, the district court again denied the motion. The New Mexico Supreme Court concurred with the district court that the State failed to meet its evidentiary burden to place defendant in pretrial detention, and affirmed the appellate court's affirmance of the district court. View "New Mexico v. Mascareno-Haidle" on Justia Law

by
The issue this case presented was one of first impression for the New Mexico Supreme Court: whether judicial conduct at trial could result in a bar to retrial under the double jeopardy clause of the New Mexico Constitution, and if so, whether the district court judge’s conduct in this case barred retrial. The Supreme Court held that judicial conduct could result in a bar to retrial under the New Mexico Constitution, and that the judicial conduct in this case barred Defendant’s retrial for felony aggravated battery against a household member with great bodily harm, misdemeanor aggravated battery against a household member without great bodily harm, and unlawful taking of a motor vehicle. View "New Mexico v. Hildreth" on Justia Law