Opinion ID: 1119431
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Second-Degree Murder and Intoxication

Text: 31. This Court has consistently held that intoxication is not a defense to second-degree murder. See State v. Tapia, 81 N.M. 274, 275-76, 466 P.2d 551, 552-53 (1970) (citing earlier cases). The rationale for this conclusion has always been that voluntary intoxication is only a defense to specific-intent crimes, whereas second-degree murder is a general-intent crime. Id. 32. This intoxication doctrine originated under an earlier version of our murder statute which held that the applicable mens rea for murder was malice aforethought. See NMSA 1978, § 30-2-1 (Orig.Pamp.) (Murder is the unlawful killing of one human being by another with malice aforethought, either express or implied, by any of the means with which death may be caused.). In 1980 the legislature amended the murder statute to its present form. 1980 N.M.Laws, ch. 21. However, even after the legislature changed the statutory mens rea of second-degree murder from malice aforethought to knowledge, this Court continued to hold that second-degree murder is a general-intent crime, State v. Ortega, 112 N.M. 554, 565 n. 9, 817 P.2d 1196, 1207 n. 9 (1991); State v. Beach, 102 N.M. 642, 644-45, 699 P.2d 115, 117-18 (1985), [4] and therefore that voluntary intoxication is not a defense, cf. Beach, 102 N.M. at 645, 699 P.2d at 118 (discussing inapplicability of diminished capacity defense). Campos now asks us to revisit these holdings.
33. Campos focuses on our statement in Beach that the mental state for second-degree murder is specific knowledge. Id. Campos suggests that the mens rea of specific knowledge transforms second-degree murder into a specific-intent crime for which intoxication would be a defense. However, this is an incorrect statement of the law. 34. First, we note that the use of the term  specific knowledge in Beach was both unfortunate and unnecessarily confusing due to its similarity with the term specific intent, which is a legal term of art. The confusion initially arose in State v. Doe, 100 N.M. 481, 484, 672 P.2d 654, 657 (1983), when this Court explained why the trial court did not have to give an instruction on general criminal intent in that case. The Doe Court explained that before the 1980 amendment of the murder statute, the necessary mental state for second-degree murder was simply the general criminal intent required for all crimes lacking a legislatively established mens rea. However, after amendment, the legislature specified the necessary intent for second-degree murder as knowledge. Id. Therefore the general criminal intent instruction was unnecessary because a particular mental state for second-degree murder was now specified and was one which the jury could evaluate without additional instruction. Unfortunately, instead of stating that the legislature established a specified mental state for second-degree murder, the Doe Court noted that the legislature set out the specific intent for second-degree murder. Id. This language led some to suggest that second-degree murder was now a specific-intent crime. 35. This Court in Beach attempted to clear up the confusion by stating that [t]he better wording in Doe would have been `specific knowledge' rather than `specific intent.' Beach, 102 N.M. at 645, 699 P.2d at 118. However, this explanation only added to the problem by retaining the term specific in conjunction with knowledge. The proper clarification should have been to state that Doe actually meant to say specified mens rea. However, by applying the nondescriptive term specific to the mens rea of knowledge the Beach Court created an unintended linguistic link between the mens rea of knowledge and the legal concept of specific-intent crimes. 36. Unfortunately, this Court stumbled into the same linguistic pitfall in Ortega, 112 N.M. at 565, 817 P.2d at 1207, in noting that the `specific intent' set forth in the [murder] statute is an element of the crime [of felony murder]. We attempted to clarify in a footnote that, in so stating, we were not suggesting that felony murder was a specific-intent crime. Id. at 565 n. 9, 817 P.2d at 1207 n. 9. However, once again, the better wording would have been that the specified mens rea set forth in the murder statute is an element of the crime of felony murder. Accordingly, to avoid any further confusion, this opinion will refer to the mens rea of second-degree murder simply as knowledge.
37. Having clarified the proper mens rea for second-degree murder, we now turn to Campos's contention that second-degree murder nevertheless should be analyzed as a specific-intent crime. We explained in Beach that the class of specific-intent crimes encompasses those crimes for which the statutory elements include an intent to do some further act or achieve some additional consequence. Beach, 102 N.M. at 644, 699 P.2d at 117; see also People v. Hood, 1 Cal.3d 444, 82 Cal.Rptr. 618, 462 P.2d 370, 378 (1969) (When the definition [of a crime] refers to defendant's intent to do some further act or achieve additional consequence, the crime is deemed to be one of specific intent.). The remaining crimes that lack this element of further intent comprise the class of general-intent crimes. Thus, a general-intent crime is one for which no additional intent to accomplish a further goal is specified. 38. A crime defined as requiring the mens rea of knowledge, such as second-degree murder, does not require any further intent and therefore does not fall within the class of specific-intent crimes. As the Beach Court properly noted, Second-degree murder ... by statutory definition, [does] not contain an element of intent to do a further act or achieve a further consequence. Id. at 645. Accordingly, as a knowledge crime, second-degree murder is a general-intent crime. The U.S. Supreme Court expressed agreement with this view of knowledge crimes in Sandstrom v. Montana , noting that [t]he element of intent in the criminal law has traditionally been viewed as a bifurcated concept embracing either the specific requirement of purpose or the more general one of knowledge or awareness. Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U.S. 510, 525-26, 99 S.Ct. 2450, 2460, 61 L.Ed.2d 39 (1979) (emphasis added) (alteration in original) (quoting United States v. United States Gypsum Co., 438 U.S. 422, 445, 98 S.Ct. 2864, 2877, 57 L.Ed.2d 854 (1978)); see also People v. DelGuidice, 199 Colo. 41, 606 P.2d 840, 843 (1979) (Second-degree murder, because it contains the mens rea element `knowingly,' is a general intent crime.). [5] 39. In Garcia this Court further clarified the approach we took in Beach. We considered in Garcia the differences between premeditated first-degree murder and second-degree murder. Garcia, 114 N.M. at 272-73, 837 P.2d at 865-66. We noted, Even though an intentional killing includes the element of knowledge of a strong probability of death or great bodily harm, the converse is not necessarily true; a killing with knowledge of the requisite probability does not necessarily include an intentional killing. Id. Indeed, we pointed out that it is precisely the deliberate intention to cause death that distinguishes premeditated first-degree murder from second-degree murder. Id. at 273, 837 P.2d at 866. It is this deliberate intent to cause death, beyond the defendant's intentional actions, that makes premeditated first-degree murder a specific-intent crime. Similarly, the lack of any additional intent element renders second-degree murder a general-intent crime for which intoxication is not a defense. 40. Furthermore, although Garcia holds that an intentional killing (which lacks premeditation or deliberation) can also be classified as second-degree murder, id., this holding does not justify an intoxication defense. Intoxication would only serve as a defense to the specific-intent aspect of the crime, namely the intentional nature of the killing, but would still leave the defendant guilty of a knowing killing, which is also second-degree murder. Cf. id. at 271, 837 P.2d at 864 (noting that neurological impairment only negates specific intent and therefore is irrelevant to the charge of second-degree murder (citing Beach )).
41. We find additional support for our holding that second-degree murder is a general-intent crime for which intoxication is not a defense by looking to the legislative intent behind the amendment of the murder statute. We note that, when the legislature amended the murder statute, it did so against the background of our previous murder cases as well as our uniform jury instructions in existence at the time. Garcia, 114 N.M. at 273, 837 P.2d at 866. 42. In Ortega we specifically examined the legislative amendment of Section 30-2-1. Ortega, 112 N.M. at 564-65, 817 P.2d at 1206-07. We explained that the term malice aforethought, as used in our previous murder statute, ha[d] become a mere symbol for denoting various mental states. Id. at 565, 817 P.2d at 1207. We found that [a]mong the mental states so denoted [by this term] ... [is] intent to do an act knowing that it will probably cause death or great bodily harm.... Id. We therefore concluded that the legislature, in amending the murder statute, simply replaced the more archaic term malice aforethought with equivalent yet more descriptive terms for the mental states for first- and second-degree murder. Id. (We thus conclude that the malice required for murder ... is an intent to kill or an intent to do an act greatly dangerous to the lives of others or with knowledge that the act creates a strong probability of death or great bodily harm.  (Emphasis added)). 43. Accordingly, it is apparent that, by amending Section 30-2-1, the legislature merely intended to modernize the terminology in the statute by replacing the term malice aforethought with clearer language that was already implicit within the meaning of malice aforethought. The legislature did not intend to dramatically alter the mens rea for second-degree murder. Thus it is logical to conclude that, in taking this step, the legislature did not intend to depart from or legislatively overrule the long line of case law that defined second-degree murder as a general-intent crime and that held intoxication is not a defense to second-degree murder. [6] 44. Strong public policy concerns bolster our conclusion that the legislature did not intend to allow intoxication to serve as a defense to second-degree murder. The prevalence of crimes involving intoxication is a particularly grave problem in New Mexico, and is of paramount concern to the legislature. Cf. Buffett v. Vargas, 121 N.M. 507, 508, 509 n. 1, 914 P.2d 1004, 1005, 1006 n. 1 (1996) (discussing New Mexico's serious problem with drunk drivers); State ex. rel . Schwartz v. Kennedy, 120 N.M. 619, 624, 904 P.2d 1044, 1049 (1995) (noting problem of high rate of DWI-related fatalities). See generally People v. DelGuidice, 199 Colo. 41, 606 P.2d 840, 844 (1979) (citing public policy as justification for not allowing intoxication as a defense to knowledge).
45. Finally, a review of other jurisdictions reveals that a majority of states (for differing reasons) do not allow intoxication as a defense to second-degree murder, including many states that do allow intoxication to negate the mens rea of knowledge. Roughly half of the states still follow the common-law approach of barring an intoxication defense for general-intent crimes, including second-degree murder. See, e.g., Shell v. State, 307 Md. 46, 512 A.2d 358, 364-67 (1986) (noting alternate approaches and concluding that it is best to retain bar on intoxication defense for general-intent crimes despite flaws); Annotation, Modern Status of the Rules as to Voluntary Intoxication as Defense to Criminal Charge, 8 A.L.R.3d 1236 (1966 & Supp.1995) (listing states); Robinson, supra, § 65(a) n. 11 (same). But see State v. Egelhoff, 272 Mont. 114, 900 P.2d 260, 266 (holding a statute that prevented consideration of intoxication for evaluation of knowledge mens rea to be unconstitutional violation of due process), cert. granted, Montana v. Egelhoff, ___ U.S. ___, 116 S.Ct. 593, 133 L.Ed.2d 514 (1995). [7] 46. Of the states that have moved away from the traditional approach to general- and specific-intent crimes, several have statutorily barred the use of intoxication as a defense to knowledge crimes such as second-degree murder. See, e.g., Idaho Code § 18-116 (1979); Nev.Rev.Stat. § 193.220 (1981); S.D.Codified Laws Ann. § 22-5-5 (1979). As for those states that do allow intoxication to negate knowledge, many still hold that the defense is inapplicable to second-degree murder because, under their statutes, second-degree murder also includes the lesser mens rea element of recklessness. See Weaver v. State, 591 So.2d 535, 546 (Ala.Crim.App.) (concluding that intoxication is no defense to depraved-heart murder based on reckless state of mind), cert. denied (Dec. 6, 1991); State v. Dufield, 131 N.H. 35, 549 A.2d 1205, 1208 (1988) (same); Model Penal Code §§ 2.08(2), 210.2(1)(b) (1985) (noting that recklessness is one mens rea for criminal homicide and that intoxication is no defense to reckless mens rea). Thus a clear majority of jurisdictions do not allow intoxication to defeat a charge of second-degree murder. Consequently, we hold that the trial court did not err when it concluded that intoxication is not a defense to second-degree murder, and therefore is also not a defense to first-degree felony murder.