Opinion ID: 2569893
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Defendant's Appeal from the District Court

Text: {19} The Court of Appeals' majority affirmed the district court and held that under Section 39-1-1 the district court had been divested of jurisdiction to hear the State's motion to reopen the hearing until the State's appeal had been resolved by dismissal, and after the dismissal of the appeal, the district court properly exercised its discretion pursuant to Section 39-1-1 to reopen the hearing and ultimately consider the evidence presented by the State. McClaugherty II, 2007-NMCA-041, ¶¶ 37, 40, 53, 141 N.M. 468, 157 P.3d 33. The Court of Appeals correctly articulated that, to be successful, Defendant's claim had to establish all three prongs of the Breit test: (1) improper official conduct so unfairly prejudicial to the defendant that it cannot be cured by means short of a mistrial or a motion for a new trial; (2) the official knows that the conduct is improper and prejudicial; and (3) the official either intends to provoke a mistrial or acts in willful disregard of the resulting mistrial, retrial, or reversal. Id. ¶ 42 (citing Breit, 1996-NMSC-067, ¶ 32, 122 N.M. 655, 930 P.2d 792). The Court of Appeals' majority reasoned that it had to find that Defendant failed to meet only a single prong of the Breit test to affirm the trial court's conclusion that Defendant's Breit claim failed. Id. ¶ 44. Relying heavily on the trial court's factual finding that the State would not have gained a tactical advantage from a mistrial in this case to conclude that the third prong of the Breit test was not met, the majority upheld the trial court's conclusion that Defendant had not met the Breit threshold for barring reprosecution. Id. ¶¶ 48-51. Judge Kennedy's dissent, while agreeing with the majority that the district court had jurisdiction to hear the motion to reopen the case, disagreed with the district court's Breit analysis. Id. ¶ 55. The dissent would have reversed the district court and barred retrial due to severe prosecutorial misconduct. Id. ¶¶ 105-106. {20} Defendant petitioned this Court for review of the Court of Appeals' published Opinion. We granted certiorari to determine, under Section 39-1-1, whether filing an appeal divests the trial court of its jurisdiction to hear a timely filed post-judgment motion and whether or not the legislature intended that a post-judgment motion be automatically denied by operation of law thirty days after it was filed, where a trial court had to set the motion for hearing outside of the thirty-day time period due to requests for continuance and the press of court business. We also granted certiorari to clarify the proper standard by which courts should review a defendant's deprivation of due process by prosecutorial misconduct.