Court Opinion

ID: 9629963
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:54:42.536262+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:33.051772
License: Public Domain

COWAN, Judge (dissenting). The majority failed to “view the evidence in the light most favorable to the state, resolving all conflicts therein and indulging all permissible inferences in favor of the verdict of conviction” as they are required to do. State v. Hinojos, 78 N.M. 32, 427 P.2d 683 (Ct.App.1967). Defendant was an oil field worker. 'Separated from his wife, he had been renting a house at 118 West Byers in Plobbs, New Mexico, from March 1970 until “just before Christmas”. The landlord had gone to the house a day or two before Christmas, found defendant gone and a man named Jim Sewell living there. Told by Sewell that the defendant had moved out, he rented the house to Sewell. On December 15 or 16 defendant had left Hobbs for Ft. Smith, Arkansas, just across the eastern border of Oklahoma, to visit his family. Ft. Smith is near an oil producing area in eastern Oklahoma. The three drilling bits involved in the case, worth approximately $1100 each, had been delivered from Ft. Smith to different drilling locations nearby, one on December 16, one on December 21, and one on December 28, 1970. The practice is for the supply houses to deliver bits to drilling rigs where they may or may not be used. If one is needed, it will be used and the drilling company charged for it. If not used, it will be picked up and returned to the warehouse. Each bit has its own individual IBM card so that its location can be determined at any time. The three bits were not used, but disappeared from the locations. On the morning of December 31, 1970, the defendant, accompanied by a man named Meissner, left Ft. Smith to return to Hobbs. They arrived in Hobbs about 10:00 P.M. and celebrated New Year’s Eve until 1:00 A.M., January 1, 1971. Somewhat intoxicated, they went to the house at 118 West Byers and went to sleep in the front room. That same day, a Hobbs police officer received a telephone tip that “there were two men selling some stolen drill bits” at a bar and that they were then at 118 West Byers, in Hobbs. Pie drove there, was granted admission and permission by Meissner to look through the house. On the kitchen counter were the three drill bits from the Ft. Smith area, some 650 miles away, where they and the defendant had been only a short time before. This is evidence sufficient to support the conviction. This jurisdiction is committed to the doctrine that fundamental error is to be resorted to in criminal cases only for the protection of those whose innocence appears indisputably, or open to such question that it would shock the conscience to permit the conviction to stand. State v. Rodriguez, 81 N.M. 503, 469 P.2d 148 (1970). The record before us does not suggest the indisputable innocence of the appellant, nor that the question of his guilt is so doubtful that it would shock the conscience to permit his conviction to stand. Feeling that the majority opinion extends the doctrine of fundamental error beyond its proper limits, I dissent.