Court Opinion

ID: 9945828
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-02-28 17:08:05.505954+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:22:13.864804
License: Public Domain

This decision of the New Mexico Court of Appeals was not selected for publication in
the New Mexico Appellate Reports. Refer to Rule 12-405 NMRA for restrictions on the
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          IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO

No. A-1-CA-41320

STATE OF NEW MEXICO,

      Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

JASON J., JR.,

      Child-Appellant.

APPEAL FROM THE DISTRICT COURT OF LEA COUNTY
Michael H. Stone, District Court Judge

Raúl Torrez, Attorney General
Santa Fe, NM
Van Snow, Acting Deputy Solicitor General
Albuquerque, NM

for Appellee

Bennett J. Baur, Chief Public Defender
Joelle N. Gonzales, Assistant Appellate Defender
Santa Fe, NM

for Appellant

                              MEMORANDUM OPINION

HANISEE, Judge.

{1}    Child-Appellant Jason J. (Child), appeals the children’s court judgment in which
Child was adjudged as a delinquent child based on the jury’s finding that Child
committed battery upon a school employee, contrary to NMSA 1978, Section 30-3-9(E)
(1989). This case arose from an incident during a high school assembly at which Child,
as a student, was accused of spitting in the face of a teacher, Cheyenne Chavarria.
Child’s sole argument on appeal is that his adjudication is not supported by sufficient
evidence because the State failed to prove that Child knew Ms. Chavarria was a
teacher at the time of the incident. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.

DISCUSSION

{2}    “The test for sufficiency of the evidence is whether substantial evidence of either
a direct or circumstantial nature exists to support a verdict of guilty beyond a reasonable
doubt with respect to every element essential to a conviction.” State v. Montoya, 2015-
NMSC-010, ¶ 52, 345 P.3d 1056 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). The
reviewing court “view[s] the evidence in the light most favorable to the guilty verdict,
indulging all reasonable inferences and resolving all conflicts in the evidence in favor of
the verdict.” State v. Cunningham, 2000-NMSC-009, ¶ 26, 128 N.M. 711, 998 P.2d 176.
“We disregard all evidence and inferences that support a different result.” State v.
Telles, 2019-NMCA-039, ¶ 16, 446 P.3d 1194. “We do not reweigh the evidence or
substitute our judgment for that of the fact finder as long as there is sufficient evidence
to support the verdict.” State v. Gipson, 2009-NMCA-053, ¶ 4, 146 N.M. 202, 207 P.3d
1179.

{3}    “The jury instructions become the law of the case against which the sufficiency of
the evidence is to be measured.” State v. Holt, 2016-NMSC-011, ¶ 20, 368 P.3d 409
(text only) (citation omitted). Here, the jury was instructed, in accordance with UJI 14-
365 NMRA (2014), that in order to find that Child committed battery upon a school
employee, the State had to prove, in pertinent part, the following elements:

       1.     [Child] intentionally touched or applied force to Cheyenne Chavarria
       by spitting on her;

       2.    At the time, Cheyenne Chavarria was a school employee and was
       performing the duties of a school employee;

       3.     [Child] knew Cheyenne Chavarria was a school employee;

       4.     [Child] acted in a rude, insolent or angry manner[.]

Under Section 30-3-9(E),

       [b]attery upon a school employee is the unlawful, intentional touching or
       application of force to the person of a school employee while he[ or she] is
       in the lawful discharge of his[ or her] duties, when done in a rude, insolent
       or angry manner. Whoever commits battery upon a school employee is
       guilty of a fourth degree felony.

Child contends that the State failed to prove that Child knew Ms. Chavarria was a
teacher at the time of the incident at the assembly, and thus his conviction is not
supported by sufficient evidence. Child draws our attention to testimony in which he
stated that he was unaware that Ms. Chavarria was a teacher. In one such segment of
testimony, Child stated that he thought Ms. Chavarria was a fellow high school student,
and in another Child stated that he thought she was a “college student” visiting to “get a
feel of what it is to be a teacher.”

{4}    In contrast, however, Child also provided testimony indicating that, on the day of
the incident at issue, he knew Ms. Chavarria was a teacher. While recounting the
incident, Child stated that he “was out of manner and should have acted like a student
and listened to the teachers like [he] was supposed to.” In another segment of his
testimony, Child discussed having taken a picture of “the teachers,” one of whom was
Ms. Chavarria. Moreover, aside from testimony, the State entered an exhibit depicting
social media messages sent by Child to a friend soon after the incident in which Child
wrote, in relevant part, “remember at the assembly how that teacher told me come here”
and “then the teacher yell[ed],”—referring to his interactions with Ms. Chavarria.

{5}    Here, the testimony presented could allow a jury to reasonably infer both that
Child knew or did not know that Ms. Chavarria was a teacher. “When a [child-appellant]
argues that the evidence and inferences present two equally reasonable hypotheses,
one consistent with guilt and another consistent with innocence, our answer is that by its
verdict, the jury has necessarily found the hypothesis of guilt more reasonable than the
hypothesis of innocence.” State v. Montoya, 2005-NMCA-078, ¶ 3, 137 N.M. 713, 114
P.3d 393. “Contrary evidence supporting acquittal does not provide a basis for reversal
because the jury is free to reject [a d]efendant’s version of the facts.” State v. Rojo,
1999-NMSC-001, ¶ 19, 126 N.M. 438, 971 P.2d 829. “We will not invade the jury’s
province as fact-finder by second-guessing the jury’s decision concerning the credibility
of witnesses, reweighing the evidence, or substituting our judgment for that of the jury.”
State v. Cabezuela, 2015-NMSC-016, ¶ 23, 350 P.3d 1145 (text only) (citation omitted);
see also State v. Salas, 1999-NMCA-099, ¶ 13, 127 N.M. 686, 986 P.2d 482
(recognizing that it is for the fact-finder to resolve any conflict in the testimony of the
witnesses and to determine what weight to give testimony and to assess credibility).

{6}    Child contends that the jury’s finding as to his knowledge that Ms. Chavarria was
a teacher was premised on conjecture, and thus cannot constitute sufficient evidence.
We disagree with this contention. While “our responsibility is to ensure that the jury’s
decisions are supportable by evidence in the record, rather than mere guess or
conjecture[, o]ur inquiry requires that we distinguish between conclusions based on
speculation and those based on inferences.” State v. Ford, 2019-NMCA-073, ¶ 8, 453
P.3d 471 (text only) (citations omitted). “A reasonable inference is a conclusion arrived
at by a process of reasoning which is a rational and logical deduction from facts
admitted or established by the evidence.” Id. (internal quotation marks and citation
omitted). Here, we cannot say that it was conjecture for a jury to find that Child knew
that Ms. Chavarria was a teacher when the evidence includes social media messages,
sent soon after the incident, in which Child referred to Ms. Chavarria as “the teacher.”
We conclude that the jury could make a rational and logical deduction from such
evidence, along with other relevant testimony, that Child knew Ms. Chavarria was a
teacher. Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict and indulging all
inferences in favor of conviction, we conclude that the evidence presented was
sufficient to permit a rational juror to find that (1) Child knew Ms. Chavarria was a
teacher at the time of the underlying incident and (2) Child committed battery upon a
school employee.

CONCLUSION

{7}   For the above reasons, we affirm.

{8}   IT IS SO ORDERED.

J. MILES HANISEE, Judge

WE CONCUR:

JACQUELINE R. MEDINA, JUDGE

ZACHARY A. IVES, JUDGE