Opinion ID: 1256193
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Murder of a Witness

Text: {78} Defendant also contends that the evidence presented to the jury was insufficient to sustain the jury's finding regarding the aggravating circumstance of murder of a witness. See § 31-20A-5(G). The trial court instructed the jury on the following elements of this aggravating circumstance: 1. [The victim] was a witness to a crime; and 2. [The victim] was murdered to prevent [her] from reporting the crime or crimes of Kidnapping and/or Attempted [CSP]. This jury instruction was patterned on UJI 14-7023 NMRA 1999. {79} We conclude that there was sufficient evidence regarding each element of the aggravating circumstance of murder of a witness. In past cases, we have noted that the evidence used to support this aggravating circumstance may include the defendant's statements to the effect that he or she could not let the victim go `because that would be the end for' the defendant, Clark I, 108 N.M. at 304, 772 P.2d at 338, prior crimes that are sufficiently probative of the defendant's motive for the killing, see id. at 304-05, 772 P.2d at 338-39, and [t]he lack of any other plausible motive, together with the acts of the defendant in attempting to avoid detection by destroying evidence at the scene that would tie him [or her] to the crime, Henderson, 109 N.M. at 660, 789 P.2d at 608. {80} The State's use of these types of evidence in the present case is consistent with our decisions in Clark I and Henderson. To meet its burden of proving that Defendant murdered a witness to a crime for the purpose of preventing report of the crime or testimony in any criminal proceeding, Section 31-20A-5(G), the State introduced statements that Defendant made to his wife (and which he acknowledged in the presence of other witnesses) to the effect that he had raped a girl and killed her to prevent her from reporting the rape. The State also introduced evidence that Defendant had served a prison sentence for a prior conviction after a witness reported the crime in spite of Defendant's threat to kill her for doing so, and that Defendant had attempted to avoid detection in the present case by disposing of the victim's body in a remote location and cleaning the pickup in which he had abducted her. Finally, evidence was presented to show that Defendant did not know the victim prior to his commission of the crimes in question, and the State argued that the jury should infer from this evidence that there was no other plausible motive for the killing.