Opinion ID: 2623375
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: New Mexico State Constitutional Claims

Text: {51} The Court of Appeals majority opined in a footnote, without exposition, that Article II, Section 10 of the New Mexico Constitution provides an adequate and independent ground for suppressing the evidence seized by Officers Roberts and Yost. Vandenberg, 2002-NMCA-066, ¶ 25 n. 3. On certiorari, the State questions whether any state constitutional claim was ever preserved and whether the Court of Appeals' opinion adequately articulated an interstitial analysis, as required by New Mexico law to support an independent claim under our state constitution. See Gomez, 1997-NMSC-006, ¶¶ 22-23. Defendants argue that a state constitutional claim was preserved, and that because the Court of Appeals decided the case under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, a complete analysis on state constitutional grounds was neither required nor appropriate. {52} We must first determine whether any state constitutional argument was preserved, as required by Rule 12-216(A) NMRA 2003 (To preserve a question for review it must appear that a ruling or decision by the district court was fairly invoked.). In analyzing preservation, we look to the arguments made by Defendant below. Defense counsel's motion to suppress argued that evidence seized must be suppressed pursuant to the federal and state constitutions, because the unlawful search was pretextual and did not fit within the protective weapons frisk exception. Defense counsel argued that the second stop and Officer Roberts' weapons frisk were pretextual, because the real reason Officer Roberts stopped Defendants and ordered them out of the car was to search them for contraband, and not because of speeding or concerns for officer safety. Defense counsel argued at the suppression hearing that, the U.S. Supreme Court doesn't care whether something is pretextual or not [and that] any excuse will sell in federal court .... [He also noted that] the State of New Mexico hasn't followed that line at all [and that] a pretextual stop is a violation of Terry .... In their briefs to this Court, Defendants argued for a different analysis of the importance of pretext under our state constitution. {53} The premise for Defendants' state constitutional claim is that Officer Roberts was acting out of ulterior motives, and that if so, the consequences of pretext should be different under our state constitution than under the federal constitution. However, the district court believed Officer Roberts, as it was entitled to do, and did not find anything pretextual about either Officer Roberts' stop or the protective frisk. The district court concluded; I'm not convinced Officer Roberts lied about speeding as the basis for his stop and if speeding occurred, then that is reasonable suspicion and the officer provided evidence supporting reasonable suspicion for his stop. Therefore, even assuming we were to adopt Defendants' argument about the consequences of officer pretext under the state constitution, that argument finds no factual foundation in this case; it presents an abstract question, which we do not decide. {54} Defendants make no other arguments below for a different approach under the New Mexico Constitution, and accordingly, we do not decide any such arguments raised for the first time on appeal.