Murder conviction of Talpa man reversed

The New Mexico Supreme Court issued a decision Jan. 26 reversing a second-degree murder conviction of a Talpa man.

In 2014, Marcos Suazo was convicted and sentenced to 14 years in prison for the fatal shooting of a friend, Michael Vigil, and the wounding of another, Roger Gage, in the Talpa area.

Talpa is located about five miles southeast of Taos.

The incident

According to court records, on May 13, 2013, Suazo, Vigil and Gage spent the day together drinking, visiting the graves of relatives and swimming in the Río Chiquito.

Suazo's brother, Daniel Suazo, had been killed earlier in the month and Gage and Vigil were seeking to console him.

When the three men returned to Suazo's trailer in Talpa, Suazo and Vigil began "roughhousing," an activity they had been known to engage in as friends.

Suazo then allegedly became agitated, entered his trailer and retrieved a shotgun the men had cleaned earlier in the day.

From a backdoor, Suazo aimed the weapon at Vigil.

Vigil then allegedly placed the barrel of the weapon in his mouth and Suazo pulled the trigger, killing Vigil and seriously wounding Gage, who was standing behind Vigil.

Conviction

At trial in district court, Suazo's defense attempted to characterize the shooting as a drunken accident.

Suazo maintained that he never intended to kill anyone and claimed that he did not know the shotgun was loaded at the time of the shooting.

Notably, during trial, the defense attempted to introduce testimony from two witnesses who allegedly had seen Suazo one hour after the shooting and heard him state that he did not know the weapon was loaded. The evidence was excluded as inadmissible hearsay.

The prosecution argued that Suazo's actions and behavior provided sufficient evidence to convict him of murder, and persuaded the court to view the details of the case through an altered jury instruction regarding second-degree murder, requiring that it find beyond a reasonable doubt that "Suazo knew or should have known" rather than "knew" that his acts created a "strong probability of death or great bodily harm."

On Aug. 13, 2014, the jury found Suazo guilty of second-degree murder, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, tampering with evidence and unlawful taking of a motor vehicle.

Reversal

Opinions written and released Jan. 26 by New Mexico Supreme Court justices Edward L. Chávez and Judith K. Nakamura provide two differing conclusions regarding the majority decision to reverse the conviction.

Justice Chávez argued that "two potentially reversible errors occurred during trial" – one, that the court excluded key testimony introduced by the defense by classifying it as hearsay; and two, that the court failed to follow the standard jury instruction regarding second-degree murder by modifying the "mens rea element" (the mental element of a crime that may assist in determining the criminal's intent).

"Because the modified instruction misstated an essential element, we reverse Suazo's conviction for second-degree murder and remand for a new trial," Chávez concluded in his opinion.

Justice Nakamura disagreed with the majority decision to reverse the conviction.

"This case is destined for the criminal law treatises," she said in her opinion, acknowledging the complexity of the case.

"A shoots C. B is standing between A and C. In order for A to shoot C, A must fire through B's head," she states, providing an algebraic account of the crime. "If we accept these facts as true, what must A have known were the likely consequences for B of A's shooting C? There can only be one conclusion: A must have known that there was a strong probability B would die. These, of course, are the facts of this case."

Nakamura agreed with the majority that the instruction regarding second-degree murder submitted to the jury was incorrect.

However, she disagreed that "the jury's decision to convict Suazo of aggravated battery against Gage indisputably establishes that the jury must also have found that Suazo acted with the required mens rea for second-degree murder."

"Because Suazo necessarily acted with the mens rea required to convict him of second-degree murder, the error in the second-degree murder instruction was not reversible," Nakamura concluded.

Despite the lack of a total consensus on the part of the Supreme Court, the majority decision to reverse Suazo's second-degree murder conviction sends the case back to trial.