Opinion ID: 2630333
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Unit of Prosecution: Multiple Tampering Convictions

Text: {36} Defendant was indicted on 17 separate counts of tampering with evidence for his extensive efforts to conceal his crime. Prior to trial, he moved the district court to merge those 17 counts into two counts on double jeopardy grounds, one count for the disposal of the victim's body and the second for all remaining acts of evidence tampering. The district court deferred ruling on the merger motion until after the jury verdict. Two counts were dismissed by directed verdict and another two resulted in verdicts of not guilty. Thirteen counts resulted in guilty verdicts. Prior to sentencing, the court ruled that four of the 13 counts did not bear sufficient indicia of distinctness from other counts to be considered separately punishable crimes. The court ultimately sentenced Defendant to consecutive aggravated prison sentences on the nine remaining tampering counts: (1) cleaning blood from various surfaces in classroom P-17; (2) placing bloody items from P-17 in a trash dumpster 100 feet away; (3) painting over blood evidence on wooden blocks in P-17; (4) cleaning blood from building P-51; (5) cleaning blood from classroom K-1; (6) cleaning blood between school buildings K-1 through K-3; (7) hiding bloody items in trash bags in the janitor's closet; (8) hiding and cleaning his clothing at his home the next day; and (9) removing and disposing of Rustvold's body. {37} Defendant argues on appeal that eight of the nine counts  all but the disposal of the victim's body  were based on a continuous course of conduct with a single mens rea and should be considered only one crime instead of eight in order to avoid multiple punishments for the same offense in violation of the double jeopardy clause. {38} The guidelines for our resolution are set forth in State v. DeGraff, 2006-NMSC-011, ¶ 34, 139 N.M. 211, 131 P.3d 61. Given the absence of any clear indication that the Legislature intended to punish Defendant separately for every item of evidence tampered with, Section 30-22-5, this Court will presume that the Legislature did not intend to impose multiple punishments for each step in a single continuous criminal action. DeGraff, 2006-NMSC-011, ¶ 34. {39} Because the tampering statute does not clearly define the intended unit of prosecution, the Court must consider whether Defendant's actions are separated by sufficient indicia of distinctness. Id. ¶ 35. Such indicia include the timing, location, and sequencing of the acts, the existence of an intervening event, the defendant's intent as evidenced by his conduct and utterances, and the number of victims. Id. (citing Herron v. State, 111 N.M. 357, 361, 805 P.2d 624, 628 (1991)). {40} In DeGraff, the defendant was found guilty of five counts of tampering with evidence for throwing three separate weapons out of his car window, abandoning his car and hiding his clothes upon returning home. Id. ¶ 32. The defendant contended that his acts constituted one count of tampering and the State argued that it constituted five counts. Id. ¶¶ 36, 38. Applying an indicia of distinctness analysis, we held that the defendant had committed three discrete crimes of tampering. Id. ¶ 36. We reasoned that the defendant hid the evidence at three different times in three different locations by throwing the weapons out of the car, later abandoning the car and then hiding his clothes the next day. Id. ¶ 37. While throwing the three weapons out of the car certainly were three physical acts, those acts were simply components of one continuous crime of disposing of the weapons. Id. ¶ 39. {41} We reach a similar result here. While Defendant performed dozens of individual physical acts in disposing of and altering a great number of evidentiary items, there were really only three conceptually separate crimes of tampering in this case, just as there were in DeGraff. The first occurred at the school immediately after the murder, where Defendant engaged in a massive attempt to clean up the evidence at the crime scene. The second occurred when he took Rustvold's body from Albuquerque to Belen and disposed of it in an irrigation ditch. The third occurred the day after the murder, when he attempted to destroy and conceal evidence at his home. {42} To impose nine sentences for three separately punishable crimes would constitute multiple punishments for the same offense. On remand, the nine tampering convictions should therefore be consolidated to three, and the six remaining tampering convictions and sentences should be vacated.