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Summaries
of Recent New Mexico Appellate Opinions - Criminal Cases
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Full Opinions - Hard Copy
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Criminal Cases: May 2008 (most
recent cases listed first)
State v. Moreland, CA 25,381 (Vigil) Feb 28, 2006, aff’d SC 30,301 (Serna) May 9, 2008
Where a defendant moves for a new trial before sentencing on the basis of evidence he discovered about defendant’s mental state during a diagnostic evaluation and he supplements that evidence with another private evaluation, and the district court grants a continuance of sentencing so that he can evaluate the motion for new trial, the motion was on the basis of newly discovered evidence, the district court granted itself an extension of time so that the deemed-denied provision does not apply, and the evidence was properly newly discovered as there was testimony that it could not have been discovered by a lay person.
Aff’d on the ground that the State withdrew its argument on the deemed denied provision and argues only that 14 months to hear and decide the motion is unreasonable, but the Court holds that a series of events (time it took to get information from State, time it took to evaluate, time it took to set hearing, time it took to consider and decide matter) were all reasonable in this complicated case; decision to grant new trial affirmed because of testimony that new evidence could not have been discovered.
State v. Bomboy, CA 26,687 (Sutin) Apr 12, 2007, rev’d SC 30,381 (Chavez) May 5, 2008
New Mexico case law forbids the seizure of contraband in plain view and within reach from outside of a vehicle once the defendant has been removed from the vehicle and arrested unless there are exigent circumstances or some other exception to the warrant requirement; even when there is no privacy interest in the search aspect because the evidence was in plain view, there is still a privacy interest in the seizure aspect when that required entry into constitutionally protected space; NM Supreme Court cases do not distinguish between privacy and possessory interests (Fry, specially concurring on the ground that but for language in NM Supreme Court cases, NM’s state constitutional jurisprudence should allow the seizure of items that are contraband in which a person cannot have a possessory interest once the privacy threshold is breached by a defendant’s own actions in showing the contraband to the world). Rev’d on the ground that obvious contraband in plain view to the world in a vehicle presents an exigent circumstance on which police are allowed to act and NM cases to the contrary are modified; determination of exigent circumstances is to be made on facts of each case, rather than bright line rules; when drug are plainly visible from outside the car, there is a danger that they will be tampered with or destroyed and there is therefore exigency.
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