Content
This page will link you to brief summaries of recently decided opinions to be published by the New Mexico Supreme Court and Court of Appeals. These summaries will inform you of opinions before they are published in the State Bar Bulletin. The summaries are grouped by month and divided into civil and criminal categories. They are kept on this site for the four most recent months.

Do not rely on these summaries for either accuracy or completeness, but rather for prompt notice of newly decided cases. A lawyer at the Court of Appeals prepares the summaries for her purposes and graciously allows their use here. The Judicial Education Center does not edit the summaries.

Note that if the Supreme Court reverses the Court of Appeals, the summary of the Supreme Court opinion will repeat the prior Court of Appeals summary and indicate the higher court’s action.

Timeliness
While these cases are usually prepared within a day or two of the date of decision, vacations or the press of other business may cause unannounced delays. You should not rely on the timeliness of these summaries.

Additional Source of Summaries
For an unofficial digest of New Mexico appellate cases (2004-date) arranged by subject, as prepared by an attorney in private practice, see "Digest of New Mexico Appellate Cases" on the University of New Mexico Law School Library website. These case summaries are not affiliated with the courts or the Judicial Education Center.

Full Opinions - Online
Effective August 31, 2005, the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals post their slip opinions to their web sites shortly after the opinions are filed. You can find the opinions at the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals websites.

Full Opinions - Hard Copy
If a case interests you, you can get a hard copy of the full opinion from the appropriate Clerk of the court. The policy of the Clerks of both courts is to provide copies of opinions free of charge to members of the judiciary. Others may go to the respective court clerk’s office and borrow an opinion for a few minutes to copy it.

Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals Clerk’s office has two locations where you can briefly borrow opinions for copying.

Santa Fe:
237 Don Gaspar Avenue
827-4925
The Supreme Court library (located in the same building) has facilities for copying.

Albuquerque:
1117 Stanford NE
841-4618
The University of New Mexico Law Library (located next to the Court of Appeals office) has facilities for copying.

Supreme Court. The Supreme Court Clerk’s office has one location, at 237 Don Gaspar Avenue, 827-4860. The Supreme Court library (located in the same building) has facilities for copying.

PLEASE NOTE. The following notice applies to each Supreme Court opinion made available prior to release for publication:

NOTICE: THIS OPINION HAS NOT BEEN RELEASED FOR PUBLICATION IN THE PERMANENT LAW REPORTS. UNTIL RELEASED, IT IS SUBJECT TO REVISION OR WITHDRAWAL. UNTIL RELEASED FOR PUBLICATION THIS OPINION SHALL NOT BE CITED IN ANY COURT. See Weinstein v. City of Santa Fe, ___ N.M. ___, 916 P.2d 1313 (1996); Rule 12-405(C) NMRA 1996.

Criminal Cases: October 2008 (most recent cases listed first)

NOTE: AS OF OCTOBER 20, 2008, THE COURT HAS DECIDED TO INDEFINITELY SUSPEND THE PUBLICATION OF CASE SUMMARIES.

State v. Downey, CA 25,068 (Fry) Feb 9, 2007, rev’d, SC 30,263 (Maes) Oct 16, 2008
Retrograde extrapolation evidence is admissible when the expert makes certain assumptions; whether the assumptions are true goes to the weight of the evidence, not admissibility, which is established because Defendant did not challenge the reliability of retrograde extrapolation as a scientific technique; Hughley does not compel a different result because in that case, appellate court affirmed the exclusion of evidence as within the discretion of the trial court and here court is affirming the admission of evidence; nor does Day compel a different result because in that case the only holding was that retrograde extrapolation was necessary, not that it required certainty in the underlying variables and the discussion of the variables in that case was dicta; Defendant was not denied a speedy trial where some delay was caused by Defendant’s medical condition and court scheduling problems, Defendant did not raise his right until just before trial; and there was no undue prejudice (Bustamante, concurring in the speedy trial analysis, but dissenting as to the retrograde extrapolation and would hold, as to that issue, that the proponent of the evidence must show a proper application of the scientific technique).
Rev’d on the ground that there being no evidence on when Defendant stopped drinking in relation to the BAC test, there was no way to know whether he was pre-absorbtive, at peak, or post-absorbtive and therefore no way to relate back a BAC to the time of driving; moreover, the admission of the test results was harmful and Defendant was entitled to a new trial because the evidence of retrograde extrapolation tainted an alternative of a general verdict and therefore the verdict needed to be set aside.