Case Name: STATE of New Mexico, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Darci Kayleen PIERCE, Defendant-Appellant
Court: Supreme Court of New Mexico
Jurisdiction: New Mexico
Decision Date: 1990-02-27
Citations: 109 N.M. 596
Docket Number: No. 17813
Parties: STATE of New Mexico, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Darci Kayleen PIERCE, Defendant-Appellant
Judges: RANSOM, J., specially concurs with opinion.
Reporter: New Mexico Reports
Volume: 109
Pages: 596–610

Head Matter:
788 P.2d 352
STATE of New Mexico, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Darci Kayleen PIERCE, Defendant-Appellant
No. 17813.
Supreme Court of New Mexico.
Feb. 27, 1990.
Jacquelyn Robins, Chief Public Defender and Bruce Rogoff, Asst. Appellate Defender, Santa Fe, for defendant-appellant.
Hal Stratton, Atty. Gen. and Katherine Zinn, Asst. Atty. Gen., Santa Fe, for plaintiff-appellee.

Opinion:
OPINION
SOSA, Chief Justice.
Defendant-appellant, Darci Pierce, was found guilty but mentally ill of first-degree' murder, kidnapping and child abuse. The crimes were committed on July 23, 1987. Appellant was sentenced to life imprisonment for first-degree murder, eighteen years for kidnapping, and eighteen months for child abuse. The sentences were to run concurrently. Our statutes pertaining to a verdict of guilty but mentally ill and sentencing thereon are, respectively, NMSA 1978, Sections 31-9-3 and 31-9-4 (Repl. Pamp.1984).
The record shows that Appellant is and has been for a long period of time a mentally unstable person. Prior to the crimes for which she was convicted, she told various persons, including her husband and doctors, that she was pregnant, when in fact she was not. During the months preceding the crimes, she became increasingly obsessed with the desire to have a baby. She kidnapped the victim, who was a pregnant woman near her date of delivery. Appellant took the victim to a remote spot, strangled her in successive stages in order to keep her alive but unconscious, while Appellant performed a crude cesarean section delivery on the victim. Appellant then took the newborn infant from the victim's body, leaving the victim to bleed to death. Appellant at first claimed the baby as her own, then, that of a surrogate mother, but eventually confessed to police what she had done and led them to the scene of the murder.
Appellant raises five points of error on appeal: (1) that a prospective juror concealed material facts during interrogation on voir dire and that the court erred in not granting a new trial on this issue following proper defense motion; (2) that the court's instructing the jury on felony murder deprived Appellant of due process and a fair trial in that it lessened the degree of mens rea required to be shown by the State on the separate charge of first degree murder; (3) that the court's instruction on a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity violated due process by improperly shifting the burden of proof on this question to Appellant; (4) that the court erroneously modified a uniform jury instruction pertaining to the definition of "mentally ill" and failed to track the language of Section 31-9-3 when instructing the jury on a verdict of guilty but mentally ill; (5) that the prosecutor's questioning of an expert defense witness on her having testified for the defense in another murder trial denied Appellant due process and a fair trial. We address each of these issues in turn.
I. THE JUROR'S ALLEGED CONCEALMENT OF A MATERIAL FACT AND THE COURT'S DENIAL OF THE DEFENSE MOTION FOR A NEW TRIAL.
The colloquy between the court and the juror on voir dire proceeded as follows:
Court: [H]ave you ever had to be treated by a psychiatrist or psychologist for any reason?
Juror: Not that I remember, your Hon- or. Not that I can remember [A]t one time, I had kind of a dizzy spell, and they thought that I needed a psychiatrist, and finally a doctor got ahold of me and took care of me. So I didn't have to have a psychiatrist.
The day after the verdict was returned, . the juror was quoted in a newspaper as saying:
I was mentally sick — It caused me to go berserk at 12 or 13. I had to go to a hospital for a year. That's why it was so easy to judge her case. I've seen people who were 10 times worse than she was go into mental hospitals and be cured.
Based on this statement, Appellant filed a motion for a new trial. At the hearing on the motion, the juror testified that his father had hit him with a board when he was young, and that this traumatic event caused him to be unable to talk and resulted in his being hospitalized for depression. When asked if the person who helped treat him in the hospital had been a psychiatrist or psychologist, the juror responded, "No, no, no, because they was not dealing with my mind. They was dealing with- my speech because I knew what was wrong."
He stated further that it was not medical treatment that healed him, but a "beautiful experience" in which "the Lord Jesus Christ, the living God, healed me. That is the experience that I have received." He denied having told the newspaper reporter that he had once been mentally sick or that he had gone berserk. He further testified that he could see the devil in the Appellant. He continued, "I saw in her right away, I saw in her witchcraft. I saw in her rebellious. I saw in her murder I saw in her all these things because I am a spiritual man." The juror continued to maintain that he had never been treated by a psychiatrist, that he had not falsely answered any question put to him by the court on voir dire, and that he had made his decision on the verdict based on the evidence presented at trial.
At the conclusion of the hearing, the court denied the motion for new trial, stating the following:
The Court will find that the Defense has failed to establish, to the satisfaction of the Court, that there were any material misrepresentations, misrepresentations or false statements of fact in the Voir Dire Examination. Also, that the Defendant's [sic] have failed to establish to the Court's satisfaction that actual prejudice has been shown by [the juror's] having been seated as a juror. The Court might just comment that he may not be the type of juror that most of us would want sitting on our cases, but that also is questionable. It could have been that the Defense might have rather had persons who had undergone psychiatric treatment or had mental illnesses, and they may have been more favorable to the Defendant's situation, as opposed to persons who had not experienced that type of illness themselves or in their families.
Also, the Court might just comment that I can easily understand how there may have been misunderstandings between what [the juror] said to the reporter and how the reporter understood them. It's difficult to follow [the juror] here as to how he testified and what he really meant. And it took a lot of explanation, and I am not sure that any of us still really understand and comprehend just what he is trying to say in all respects. According to [the juror's] testimony, as far as he's concerned, he never was treated by a psychiatrist or psychologist.
The standard for review of this issue is based on two cases, each involved with the same defendant and the same set of facts. State v. Baca, 99 N.M. 754, 664 P.2d 360 (1983), and Baca v. Sullivan 821 F.2d 1480 (10th Cir.1987). After we affirmed the conviction in State v. Baca, the defendant petitioned in Baca v. Sullivan for a writ of habeas corpus to the United States District Court for the District of new Mexico. The petition was dismissed, and on appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, the dismissal was affirmed.
In State v. Baca, a juror falsely answered "no" to a jury questionnaire in which he was asked if any member of this family "past or present" had served in a law enforcement agency. In actuality, his brother had served over thirty years on the Albuquerque police force before retiring. The juror also checked "criminal" on the questionnaire when in fact he had previously served on a jury trying a civil suit. Finally, when the panel was asked on voir dire if anyone had a relative or close friend "who might work for a police department," the juror remained silent, presumably because the question was phrased in the present tense and did not require him to answer.
As in the case before us, in State v. Baca, when the juror's inaccurate responses came to light, the defendant sought a new trial. In denying the motion for new trial, the trial court found that the juror's false answer to the question about his brother's service on the police force was not relevant to the juror's ability to serve as an impartial juror. In reviewing the record in that case we held there were not "such relevant and material facts present in the case that might bear on possible disqualification of the juror, so that it could be asserted that the defendant's trial was conducted in an atmosphere of bias or partiality." Id., at 756, 664 P.2d at 362. In reviewing the trial court's hearing of the motion for new trial, we held, "Where there is nothing to indicate either manifest error or abuse of discretion by the trial court, in permitting [the juror] to serve as a juror, the trial court's decision will not be disturbed on appeal. The burden of establishing partiality is upon the party making such a claim." Id. (citations omitted).
In its review of the case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit focused both on the irrelevance of the juror's answer to his service as an impartial juror and the failure of the defendant to show actual prejudice. Similar to the appellant's position at oral argument in the case at bar, the defendant in Baca v. Sullivan argued before the Court of Appeals that the juror's false answer deprived the defendant of a peremptory challenge. The Court of Appeals rejected that argument, relying on McDonough Power Equipment, Inc. v. Greenwood, 464 U.S. 548, 555, 104 S.Ct. 845, 849, 78 L.Ed.2d 663 (1984). In McDonough, the Supreme Court held both that a challanged juror must be shown to have answered dishonestly a material question on voir dire, and that had the juror given a correct response, the answer would have been grounds for a challenge for cause. Finally, the Court of Appeals relied on United States v. Perkins, 748 F.2d 1519, 1532 (11th Cir.1984), as support for the proposition that " '[a] party who seeks a new trial because of non-disclosure by a juror during voir dire must show actual bias.' " Baca v. Sullivan, 821 F.2d at 1483.
Appellant argues that Mares v. State, 83 N.M. 225, 490 P.2d 667 (1971), supports her contention that it makes no difference whether the juror in the case before us mistakenly or willfully stated he had never seen a psychiatrist or a psychologist. In Mares a prospective juror had disclosed on voir dire that he had long been a friend of the complaining witness, but had failed to disclose in addition that he had been in the witness' home on the date of the crime, when police officers were present seeking fingerprints. In Mares, we held that unintentional fault on the part of the challenged juror made no difference, so long as the defendant was prejudiced. We reversed the conviction and ordered a new trial. We agree with Appellant that Mares is still good law despite Baca v. State and Baca v. Sullivan, but we disagree with her that Mares compels us to reach a different result than that reached in the Baca cases.
First, unlike the situation in Mares, we find no relationship in the case before us between the juror's erroneous answer and his capacity to sit as an impartial juror. We agree with the trial court that had the juror told the court that he had had prior psychiatric or psychological therapy, it may have been interpreted by Appellant as a helpful response. Whatever remarks the juror may later have made to a newspaper reporter, the trial court was bound to consider only the juror's in-court statements. Had those statements indicated prior psychological treatment, it is not clear that the defense would have regarded him as an unfavorable juror. The defense only later came to regard the juror as unfavorable, and solely because of certain remarks he made to a journalist, a portion of which the juror later denied having made.
Thus, second, we find no actual prejudice to Appellant stemming from the juror's answers on voir dire. It is true that after trial the juror made certain eccentric remarks about his ability to judge Appellant's character. However, the issue at the hearing on motion for new trial was whether the juror had misled the court in giving false answers as to his supposed prior psychiatric or psychological treatment. In conducting the hearing on the motion for new trial the court was limited to that issue and to the issue of the juror's impartiality. At the hearing on the motion, the juror testified that he arrived at his verdict on the basis of the evidence presented at trial, and not on the basis of what he had known about former mental patients he may have seen, or about his ability "to see the devil in the Appellant." When asked by defense counsel if his experience with former mental patients had given him "special insights as to whether [Appellant] was insane," the juror answered, "No, no. Like I said, at that time when I was sitting as a juror, it did not even enter—it didn't enter my mind at all."
Finally, in response to the issue raised by Appellant at oral argument as to her right to have peremptorily challenged the juror, we agree with the court in Williams v. United States, 418 F.2d 372, 377 (10th Cir.1969), that "[t]he fact that [the] juror might have been peremptorily challenged by defendant is not alone sufficient to reverse defendant's conviction."
We thus hold: (1) assuming that the juror made the alleged misrepresentations on voir dire, whether intentionally or unintentionally, his statements were not germane to his capacity to sit as an impartial juror; (2) assuming the juror made the alleged misrepresentations, Appellant has not shown how she was actually prejudiced by the juror's sitting on the jury; (3) Appellant was not entitled as a matter of law to have exercised a peremptory challenge to strike the juror from sitting on the jury; and (4) the trial court soundly exercised its discretion in denying the motion for new trial. Appellant, as to this issue, has not shown reversible error.
II. THE COURT'S INSTRUCTION ON FELONY MURDER AND ITS EFFECT ON THE JURY'S CONSIDERATION OF APPELLANT'S INTENT TO COMMIT FIRST-DEGREE MURDER.
The court instructed the jury on first-degree murder, in pertinent part, as follows:
For you to find the defendant guilty of first degree murder by deliberate killing the state must prove each of the following elements of the crime:
1. The defendant killed [the victim];
2. The killing was with the deliberate intention to take away the life of [the victim];
#
A deliberate intention refers to the state of mind of the defendant. A deliberate intention may be inferred from all of the facts and circumstances of the killing To constitute a deliberate killing, the slayer must weigh and consider the question of killing and his reasons for and against such a choice.
The court likewise instructed the jury on felony murder, in pertinent part, as follows:
For you to find the Defendant guilty of felony murder, which is first degree murder, as charged in the alternative to Count I, the state must prove to your satisfaction beyond a reasonable doubt each of the following elements of the crime:
1. The Defendant committed the crime of kidnapping;
2. During the commission of kidnapping, the Defendant caused the death of [the victim];
Appellant contends that the court's instructing the jury in the alternative as to first-degree murder and felony murder made the prosecution's burden lighter in that the prosecution did not have to show mens rea, or the necessary state of mind, for first-degree murder, and that this lesser burden deprived Appellant of a fair trial.
First of all, as our court of appeals has correctly held:
When a death occurs during the commission of an inherently dangerous felony, the prosecution bears no burden of proving intent to kill. Rather, the requisite malice aforethought can be inferred from the commission or attempted commission of the felony Thus, the determination of whether felony murder has been properly charged does not turn on whether the murder was intentionally or unintentionally committed; felony murder simply contains no mens rea requirement.
State v. Price, 104 N.M. 703, 726 P.2d 857 (Ct.App.), cert. quashed, 104 N.M. 702, 726 P.2d 856 (1986), citing State v. Harrison, 90 N.M. 439, 564 P.2d 1321 (1977); Head v. State, 443 N.E.2d 44 (Ind.1982).
The fact that felony murder has no mens rea requirement, however, does not lessen the mens rea requirement for the separate crime of first-degree murder, as is shown by the detailed instruction given by the court, quoted above, on the intention needed to establish first-degree murder as a separate crime.
Appellant would apparently have us do away with the doctrine of felony murder, an option we faced in Harrison but declined to choose. We reiterate our holding in Harrison: Where the felony supporting felony murder is inherently dangerous, and where it is independent of the act causing the death of the victim, it may be used to support an alternative count of felony murder against a defendant charged separately with first-degree murder.
The felony relied on here, kidnapping, was obviously an inherently dangerous crime, for the victim was taken against her will at Kirtland Air Force Base with the intent to hold her for service against her will — namely, to extract the victim's unborn child from her womb. The victim was driven to a spot several miles away from Kirtland, to a location where the baby was delivered and the murder was committed. The kidnapping and the murder were separate acts. Taking the victim for service against her will did not kill her. Strangling the victim and allowing her to bleed to death killed her. In this case, the kidnapping and the murder were separate and individual crimes. By the test adopted in Harrison, the trial court did not commit error in instructing the jury in the alternative on first-degree murder and felony murder.
III. THE COURT'S INSTRUCTION ON A VERDICT OF NOT GUILTY BY REASON OF INSANITY.
The disputed instruction reads, in pertinent part, as follows:
There is an issue in this case as to the Defendant's mental condition at the time the acts were committed. You will be given alternative verdict forms for each crime charged as follows:
# * >!<
Not guilty by reason of insanity.

You will first consider whether the Defendant committed the crime. If you determine that the Defendant committed the acts charged, but you are not satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that she was sane at the time, you must find her not guilty by reason of insanity.
Appellant contends that by instructing the jury first to consider whether Appellant committed the "crime" and then to determine whether she was sane at the time "the acts charged" were committed, the court deprived her of due process. Appellant reasons that by having the jury determine whether a crime was committed before considering Appellant's sanity turns the burden of proof "on its head." Appellant contends that the jury could not determine whether a crime had been committed until it had first determined whether Appellant was sane or insane. Thus, Appellant concludes, the above instructions deprived her of a fair trial.
We find it hard to understand why the court erred by phrasing the instruction in the way it did when Appellant's own tendered instructions likewise first ask the jury to find whether the defendant is guilty of the crimes of kidnapping and first-degree murder, and then asks the jury to determine if the defendant was "not guilty by reason of insanity." The court's instruction was patterned on SCRA 1986, 14-5101, which states:
You will first consider whether the defendant committed the crime. If you determine that the defendant committed the act charged, but you are not satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that [s]he was sane at the time, you must find [her] not guilty by reason of insanity.
There is no disparity between the court's instruction and the uniform instruction. Further, the propriety of the jury's consideration of the crime charged before its consideration of the defendant's sanity has long been settled. State v. James, 83 N.M. 263, 267, 490 P.2d 1236, 1240 (Ct.App.1971).
IV. THE COURT'S MODIFICATION OF THE UNIFORM INSTRUCTION AND ITS FAILURE TO TRACK THE WORDS OF NMSA 1978, 31-9-3, AS REQUESTED IN DEFENDANT'S INSTRUCTION NO. 3.
SCRA 1986, 14-5103, the uniform jury instruction at issue, reads:
The defendant was mentally ill at the time of the commission of the crime if a substantial disorder of thought, mood or behavior impaired [her] judgment at the time of the commission of the offense. If you find beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the act charged you may find [her] guilty but mentally ill at the time of the commission of the offense. (Emphasis added.)
The court's actual instruction reads word for word the same as the above, except that in the actual instruction the word offense was substituted for the word act in the second sentence. Appellant contends that this change deprived her of a fair trial. Second, Appellant contends that the instruction did not track the language of NMSA 1978, Section 31-9-3(D), and specifically, Appellant's version of that section, which was tendered as Defendant's Requested Instruction No. 3, reading as follows:
You may find the Defendant guilty but mentally ill if you find beyond a reasonable doubt that the Defendant:
1) is guilty of the offense charged;
2) was mentally ill at the time of the commission of the offense;
and
3) was not legally insane at the time of the commission of the offense.
The portion of the statute in question reads identically to the words used by Appellant, except that the preamble in the statute reads as follows:
When a defendant has asserted a defense of insanity, the court may find the defendant guilty but mentally ill if after hearing all of the evidence the court finds beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant: [then follow the three requirements listed by Appellant above in her requested Instruction No. 3].
Appellant contends that the instruction given by the court should have included the words contained in Defendant's Requested Instruction No. 3, or that it should have tracked the statute. In summary then, Appellant contends that by changing the uniform jury instruction (14-5103), and by not giving Defendant's Requested Instruction No. 3 ("tracking the statute," Section 31-9-3), Appellant was deprived of a fair trail.
At the time when the court discussed jury instructions with the parties' attorneys, Appellant's attorney stated on the record as follows: "We did strongly object to the word act *". The court then stated, "I changed that to offense — committed the offense charged, which is what you asked me to do." Appellant cannot be heard now to object to a change in the court's instruction which she herself through her attorney asked the court to make.
As to the issue raised by the statement in Section 31-9-3 to the effect that the court "shall separately instruct the jury that a verdict'of guilty but mentally ill may be returned instead of a verdict of guilty or not guilty," the court by giving the uniform instruction (SCRA 1986,14-5103), and the other instructions discussed above, did precisely what the statute calls for. The statute does not say that the instruction must replicate itself in the instruction so given. We prepared SCRA 1986, 14-5103 after the enactment of Section 31-9-3 precisely for the purpose of giving trial courts a uniform instruction to meet the requirements of Section 31-9-3. The court committed no error in giving the uniform instruction and in not tracking the language of Section 31-9-3 as requested by Appellant in her Requested Instruction No. 3.
V. THE PROSECUTOR'S QUESTION TO AN EXPERT DEFENSE WITNESS
The question objected to by Appellant occurred during the following exchange between the prosecutor and the expert witness:
Q. And you've been called upon often to testify in murder cases on behalf of the Defense, haven't you?
A. Yes.
Q. And, in fact, you've testified or you did testify in the case involving William Wayne Gilbert, didn't you, for the Defense?
At that point Appellant's attorney objected and the objection was sustained. In a bench conference, the court instructed the prosecutor as follows: "You can go in to [sic] whether or not she testifys [sic] for the Defense. It's an attempt to show bias. But you can't cite specific cases unless you're going to use that testimony in that [sic] case for some reason." The witness never answered the question about having testified in the Gilbert case, and Appellant's attorney did not seek to have the court admonish the jury concerning the question. We fail to see how Appellant was prejudiced by the prosecutor's question, which lay unanswered, and even if it had been answered in the affirmative would have been of dubious prejudicial value. The prosecutor's question was hardly fundamental error requiring a new trial.
For the foregoing reasons we affirm the judgment and sentence of the trial court in its entirety.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
RANSOM, J., specially concurs with opinion.
BACA, J., concurs.
MONTGOMERY, J., dissents with opinion in which WILSON, J., joins.